the biography of karl marx

German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx published 'The Communist Manifesto' and 'Das Kapital,' anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism.

(1818-1883)

Who Was Karl Marx?

Karl Marx began exploring sociopolitical theories at university among the Young Hegelians. He became a journalist, and his socialist writings would get him expelled from Germany and France. In 1848, he published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels and was exiled to London, where he wrote the first volume of Das Kapital and lived the remainder of his life.

Karl Heinrich Marx was one of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx in Trier, Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer who revered Kant and Voltaire, and was a passionate activist for Prussian reform. Although both parents were Jewish with rabbinical ancestry, Karl’s father converted to Christianity in 1816 at the age of 35.

This was likely a professional concession in response to an 1815 law banning Jews from high society. He was baptized a Lutheran, rather than a Catholic, which was the predominant faith in Trier, because he “equated Protestantism with intellectual freedom.” When he was 6, Karl was baptized along with the other children, but his mother waited until 1825, after her father died.

Marx was an average student. He was educated at home until he was 12 and spent five years, from 1830 to 1835, at the Jesuit high school in Trier, at that time known as the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium. The school’s principal, a friend of Marx’s father, was a liberal and a Kantian and was respected by the people of Rhineland but suspect to authorities. The school was under surveillance and was raided in 1832.

In October of 1835, Marx began studying at the University of Bonn. It had a lively and rebellious culture, and Marx enthusiastically took part in student life. In his two semesters there, he was imprisoned for drunkenness and disturbing the peace, incurred debts and participated in a duel. At the end of the year, Marx’s father insisted he enroll in the more serious University of Berlin.

In Berlin, he studied law and philosophy and was introduced to the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, who had been a professor at Berlin until his death in 1831. Marx was not initially enamored with Hegel, but he soon became involved with the Young Hegelians, a radical group of students including Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach, who criticized the political and religious establishments of the day.

In 1836, as he was becoming more politically zealous, Marx was secretly engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, a sought-after woman from a respected family in Trier who was four years his senior. This, along with his increasing radicalism, caused his father angst. In a series of letters, Marx’s father expressed concerns about what he saw as his son’s “demons,” and admonished him for not taking the responsibilities of marriage seriously enough, particularly when his wife-to-be came from a higher class.

Marx did not settle down. He received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841, but his radical politics prevented him from procuring a teaching position. He began to work as a journalist, and in 1842, he became the editor of Rheinische Zeitung , a liberal newspaper in Cologne. Just one year later, the government ordered the newspaper’s suppression, effective April 1, 1843. Marx resigned on March 18th. Three months later, in June, he finally married Jenny von Westphalen, and in October, they moved to Paris.

Paris was the political heart of Europe in 1843. There, along with Arnold Ruge, Marx founded a political journal titled Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals). Only a single issue was published before philosophical differences between Marx and Ruge resulted in its demise, but in August of 1844, the journal brought Marx together with a contributor, Friedrich Engels, who would become his collaborator and lifelong friend. Together, the two began writing a criticism of the philosophy of Bruno Bauer, a Young Hegelian and former friend of Marx’s. The result of Marx and Engels’s first collaboration was published in 1845 as The Holy Family .

Later that year, Marx moved to Belgium after being expelled from France while writing for another radical newspaper, Vorwärts! , which had strong ties to an organization that would later become the Communist League.

In Brussels, Marx was introduced to socialism by Moses Hess, and finally broke off from the philosophy of the Young Hegelians completely. While there, he wrote The German Ideology , in which he first developed his theory on historical materialism. Marx couldn’t find a willing publisher, however, and The German Ideology -- along with Theses on Feuerbach , which was also written during this time -- were not published until after his death.

At the beginning of 1846, Marx founded a Communist Correspondence Committee in an attempt to link socialists from around Europe. Inspired by his ideas, socialists in England held a conference and formed the Communist League, and in 1847 at a Central Committee meeting in London, the organization asked Marx and Engels to write Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The Communist Manifesto, as this work is commonly known, was published in 1848, and shortly after, in 1849, Marx was expelled from Belgium. He went to France, anticipating a socialist revolution, but was deported from there as well. Prussia refused to renaturalize him, so Marx moved to London. Although Britain denied him citizenship, he remained in London until his death.

In London, Marx helped found the German Workers’ Educational Society, as well as a new headquarters for the Communist League. He continued to work as a journalist, including a 10-year stint as a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune from 1852 to 1862, but he never earned a living wage and was largely supported by Engels.

Marx became increasingly focused on capitalism and economic theory, and in 1867, he published the first volume of Das Kapital. The rest of his life was spent writing and revising manuscripts for additional volumes, which he did not complete. The remaining two volumes were assembled and published posthumously by Engels.

Marx died of pleurisy in London on March 14, 1883. While his original grave had only a nondescript stone, the Communist Party of Great Britain erected a large tombstone, including a bust of Marx, in 1954. The stone is etched with the last line of The Communist Manifesto (“Workers of all lands unite”), as well as a quote from the Theses on Feuerbach.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Karl Heinrich Marx
• Birth Year: 1818
• Birth date: May 5, 1818
• Birth City: Trier
• Birth Country: Germany
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx published 'The Communist Manifesto' and 'Das Kapital,' anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism.
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• Education and Academia
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• University of Berlin
• University of Bonn
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• Death Year: 1883
• Death date: March 14, 1883
• Death City: London
• Death Country: England

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: November 9, 2009

As a university student, Karl Marx (1818-1883) joined a movement known as the Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political and cultural establishments of the day. He became a journalist, and the radical nature of his writings would eventually get him expelled by the governments of Germany, France and Belgium. In 1848, Marx and fellow German thinker Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto,” which introduced their concept of socialism as a natural result of the conflicts inherent in the capitalist system. Marx later moved to London, where he would live for the rest of his life. In 1867, he published the first volume of “Capital” (Das Kapital), in which he laid out his vision of capitalism and its inevitable tendencies toward self-destruction, and took part in a growing international workers’ movement based on his revolutionary theories.

Karl Marx’s Early Life and Education

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Prussia; he was the oldest surviving boy in a family of nine children. Both of his parents were Jewish, and descended from a long line of rabbis, but his father, a lawyer, converted to Lutheranism in 1816 due to contemporary laws barring Jews from higher society. Young Karl was baptized in the same church at the age of 6, but later became an atheist.

Did you know? The 1917 Russian Revolution, which overthrew three centuries of tsarist rule, had its roots in Marxist beliefs. The revolution’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, built his new proletarian government based on his interpretation of Marxist thought, turning Karl Marx into an internationally famous figure more than 30 years after his death.

After a year at the University of Bonn (during which Marx was imprisoned for drunkenness and fought a duel with another student), his worried parents enrolled their son at the University of Berlin, where he studied law and philosophy. There he was introduced to the philosophy of the late Berlin professor G.W.F. Hegel and joined a group known as the Young Hegelians, who were challenging existing institutions and ideas on all fronts, including religion, philosophy, ethics and politics.

Karl Marx Becomes a Revolutionary

After receiving his degree, Marx began writing for the liberal democratic newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, and he became the paper’s editor in 1842. The Prussian government banned the paper as too radical the following year. With his new wife, Jenny von Westphalen, Marx moved to Paris in 1843. There Marx met fellow German émigré Friedrich Engels, who would become his lifelong collaborator and friend. In 1845, Engels and Marx published a criticism of Bauer’s Young Hegelian philosophy entitled “The Holy Father.”

By that time, the Prussian government intervened to get Marx expelled from France, and he and Engels had moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Marx renounced his Prussian citizenship. In 1847, the newly founded Communist League in London, England, drafted Marx and Engels to write “The Communist Manifesto,” published the following year. In it, the two philosophers depicted all of history as a series of class struggles (historical materialism), and predicted that the upcoming proletarian revolution would sweep aside the capitalist system for good, making the workingmen the new ruling class of the world.

Karl Marx’s Life in London and “Das Kapital”

With revolutionary uprisings engulfing Europe in 1848, Marx left Belgium just before being expelled by that country’s government. He briefly returned to Paris and Germany before settling in London, where he would live for the rest of his life, despite being denied British citizenship. He worked as a journalist there, including 10 years as a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, but never quite managed to earn a living wage, and was supported financially by Engels. In time, Marx became increasingly isolated from fellow London Communists, and focused more on developing his economic theories. In 1864, however, he helped found the International Workingmen’s Association (known as the First International) and wrote its inaugural address. Three years later, Marx published the first volume of “Capital” (Das Kapital) his masterwork of economic theory. In it he expressed a desire to reveal “the economic law of motion of modern society” and laid out his theory of capitalism as a dynamic system that contained the seeds of its own self-destruction and subsequent triumph of communism. Marx would spend the rest of his life working on manuscripts for additional volumes, but they remained unfinished at the time of his death, of pleurisy, on March 14, 1883.

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GREAT THINKERS Karl Marx

Karl Marx ranks among the most influential political philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He spawned a far-reaching intellectual and cultural movement, known as Marxism; and a worldwide political organization under the name of communism, both of which followed Marx’s lead by propagating the doctrines of class struggle, historical materialism, and the inherent contradictions of industrial capital. For this reason his ideas are well known and his works are widely available, though his earlier writings, which are more philosophical and less dogmatic than the later economic works, have sometimes been suppressed by Communist publishers.

Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, in the Rhineland, then part of Prussia. Though he came from a long line of rabbis, Marx’s father was a lawyer with liberal views who left Judaism and became a Protestant for social reasons. Marx attended the University of Bonn briefly before becoming a student of law, theology, and philosophy at the University of Berlin. At Bonn he had been a member of the Poets’ Club, which counted many political radicals as members. In Berlin, he joined the Doctor Club, where he associated with the Young Hegelians, whose work he would later adapt for his teaching on historical materialism. During his college years Marx wrote some fiction and poetry; a number of his love poems, written to his girlfriend Jenny von Westphalen, are also available to us. Jenny and Karl met as children, courted as teenagers, married after their studies, had seven children, and lived together through old age.

Marx wrote his doctoral thesis on the difference between the materialism of Democritus and Epicurus. His thesis adviser was the heterodox Hegelian Bruno Bauer, and the thesis was controversial at the University of Berlin for its explicit atheism and overt attacks on theology. Marx was forced to submit it to the more liberal University of Jena, which gave him his PhD in 1841. In Berlin Marx became the editor of the short-lived Rheinische Zeitung , in which he regularly criticized not only the conservative Prussian government, but also socialists whom he thought did not understand either that a real practical struggle was required for revolution, or that incremental political reforms were insufficient and potentially counterproductive. Marx exhibited here his lifelong intellectual and political practice, called for by his theoretical conclusions with regard to the purpose of philosophy, of engaging in political disputes not necessarily to refute his opponents, but to denounce them; and to offer his own teaching, not as possibility or interpretation, but as a necessary fact obvious to anyone without ulterior motives.

After the closing of Rheinische Zeitung , Marx moved to Paris, where he continued his radical activity on behalf of socialism, began to study political economy, and further engaged with the Young Hegelian critique of religion. Indeed, his thought can be characterized very roughly as a synthesis of three themes: socialism, political economy, and the critique of religion. At this time Marx co-edited the one and only issue of German socialist Arnold Ruge’s radical publication, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher , in which he published two of his most important works, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and On the Jewish Question . Here he began to apply the logic of Hegelian dialectic and adapt the critique of religion offered by the Young Hegelians to economic relations, providing the framework for the later, more detailed critique of political economy and for the“scientific socialism” of Das Kapital . In 1844 Marx published with Vorwärts!  a utopian socialist German-language newspaper in France, and wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts , in which he sought to justify his developing economic theories in Hegelian terms.

1844 was also when Marx met Frederich Engels, writer of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 , with whom he will forever be associated. Together they wrote The Holy Family.  In 1845 he wrote the brief “Theses on Feuerbach,” which claimed that if man is to be made whole, and not to live an alienated existence, he must change the material conditions that cause that alienation. The task of the philosopher, Marx here expresses most succinctly, is to enlighten the world by changing it.

Marx was expelled from France in 1845. He went to Brussels, where he began, with Engels, to write The German Ideology.  While in Brussels Marx helped transform a group with whom he was associated, the League of the Just, into an overt political organization called the Communist League. The Communist Manifesto is a program of action for this League. He imagined the transformation from capitalism to socialism would happen quickly, and expended great energy over the next two years trying to bring it along. Expelled from Brussels, he moved first to Paris and then Cologne, where he started and ran the Neue Rheinische Zeitung . Marx then fled to London, where he lived for the rest of his life in relative poverty. He was employed, though, as a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune . Marx wrote often on the American slavery crisis, likening slaves to the industrial proletariat. In London Marx wrote the first volume of Das Kapital and made notes for the three additional volumes that were later published by Engels. In 1864 he became involved with the International Workingmen’s Association (now known as the First International), was elected to the General Council, and ultimately prevailed over those in the group, such as Mikhail Bakunin, who disagreed with his understanding of socialism. The First International disbanded in 1876, and when Marx died in 1883 there was no clearly recognized intellectual head of the worldwide socialist movement. Most socialist thinkers positioned themselves in relation to Marx’s thought, and as Marxism seemed to require a chief dogmatist and interpreter of events, competition for this position ensued.

For further biographical reading, see:

The Cambridge Companion to Marx , Ed. Terrell Carver, Cambridge: 1992.

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Karl Marx (1818–1883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism — Marx’s theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx’s economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx’s prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal.

1. Marx’s Life and Works

• 2.1. On The Jewish Question
• 2.2. Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction
• 2.3. 1844 Manuscripts
• 2.4. Theses on Feuerbach

3. Economics

4.1 the german ideology, 4.2 1859 preface, 4.3 functional explanation, 4.4 rationality, 4.5 alternative interpretations, 5. morality, other internet resources, related entries.

Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in 1818. Although his family was Jewish they converted to Christianity so that his father could pursue his career as a lawyer in the face of Prussia’s anti-Jewish laws. A precocious schoolchild, Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, and then wrote a PhD thesis in Philosophy, comparing the views of Democritus and Epicurus. On completion of his doctorate in 1841 Marx hoped for an academic job, but he had already fallen in with too radical a group of thinkers and there was no real prospect. Turning to journalism, Marx rapidly became involved in political and social issues, and soon found himself having to consider communist theory. Of his many early writings, four, in particular, stand out. ‘Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction’, and ‘On The Jewish Question’, were both written in 1843 and published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts , written in Paris 1844, and the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ of 1845, remained unpublished in Marx’s lifetime.

The German Ideology , co-written with Engels in 1845, was also unpublished but this is where we see Marx beginning to develop his theory of history. The Communist Manifesto is perhaps Marx’s most widely read work, even if it is not the best guide to his thought. This was again jointly written with Engels and published with a great sense of excitement as Marx returned to Germany from exile to take part in the revolution of 1848. With the failure of the revolution Marx moved to London where he remained for the rest of his life. He now concentrated on the study of economics, producing, in 1859, his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy . This is largely remembered for its Preface, in which Marx sketches out what he calls ‘the guiding principles’ of his thought, on which many interpretations of historical materialism are based. Marx’s main economic work is, of course, Capital (Volume 1), published in 1867, although Volume 3, edited by Engels, and published posthumously in 1894, contains much of interest. Finally, the late pamphlet Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) is an important source for Marx’s reflections on the nature and organisation of communist society.

The works so far mentioned amount only to a small fragment of Marx’s opus, which will eventually run to around 100 large volumes when his collected works are completed. However the items selected above form the most important core from the point of view of Marx’s connection with philosophy, although other works, such as the 18 th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), are often regarded as equally important in assessing Marx’s analysis of concrete political events. In what follows, I shall concentrate on those texts and issues that have been given the greatest attention within the Anglo-American philosophical literature.

2. The Early Writings

The intellectual climate within which the young Marx worked was dominated by the influence of Hegel, and the reaction to Hegel by a group known as the Young Hegelians, who rejected what they regarded as the conservative implications of Hegel’s work. The most significant of these thinkers was Ludwig Feuerbach, who attempted to transform Hegel’s metaphysics, and, thereby, provided a critique of Hegel’s doctrine of religion and the state. A large portion of the philosophical content of Marx’s works written in the early 1840s is a record of his struggle to define his own position in reaction to that of Hegel and Feuerbach and those of the other Young Hegelians.

2.1 ‘On The Jewish Question’

In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between himself and his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx’s reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of feud and religious prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour, which we will explore below.

2.2 ‘Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction’

This work is home to Marx’s notorious remark that religion is the ‘opiate of the people’, a harmful, illusion-generating painkiller, and it is here that Marx sets out his account of religion in most detail. Just as importantly Marx here also considers the question of how revolution might be achieved in Germany, and sets out the role of the proletariat in bringing about the emancipation of society as a whole.

With regard to religion, Marx fully accepted Feuerbach’s claim in opposition to traditional theology that human beings had invented God in their own image; indeed a view that long pre-dated Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s distinctive contribution was to argue that worshipping God diverted human beings from enjoying their own human powers. While accepting much of Feuerbach’s account Marx’s criticizes Feuerbach on the grounds that he has failed to understand why people fall into religious alienation and so is unable to explain how it can be transcended. Feuerbach’s view appears to be that belief in religion is purely an intellectual error and can be corrected by persuasion. Marx’s explanation is that religion is a response to alienation in material life, and therefore cannot be removed until human material life is emancipated, at which point religion will wither away. Precisely what it is about material life that creates religion is not set out with complete clarity. However, it seems that at least two aspects of alienation are responsible. One is alienated labour, which will be explored shortly. A second is the need for human beings to assert their communal essence. Whether or not we explicitly recognize it, human beings exist as a community, and what makes human life possible is our mutual dependence on the vast network of social and economic relations which engulf us all, even though this is rarely acknowledged in our day-to-day life. Marx’s view appears to be that we must, somehow or other, acknowledge our communal existence in our institutions. At first it is ‘deviously acknowledged’ by religion, which creates a false idea of a community in which we are all equal in the eyes of God. After the post-Reformation fragmentation of religion, where religion is no longer able to play the role even of a fake community of equals, the state fills this need by offering us the illusion of a community of citizens, all equal in the eyes of the law. Interestingly, the political liberal state, which is needed to manage the politics of religious diversity, takes on the role offered by religion in earlier times of providing a form of illusory community. But the state and religion will both be transcended when a genuine community of social and economic equals is created.

Of course we are owed an answer to the question how such a society could be created. It is interesting to read Marx here in the light of his third Thesis on Feuerbach where he criticises an alternative theory. The crude materialism of Robert Owen and others assumes that human beings are fully determined by their material circumstances, and therefore to bring about an emancipated society it is necessary and sufficient to make the right changes to those material circumstances. However, how are those circumstances to be changed? By an enlightened philanthropist like Owen who can miraculously break through the chain of determination which ties down everyone else? Marx’s response, in both the Theses and the Critique, is that the proletariat can break free only by their own self-transforming action. Indeed if they do not create the revolution for themselves — in alliance, of course, with the philosopher — they will not be fit to receive it.

2.3 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts cover a wide range of topics, including much interesting material on private property and communism, and on money, as well as developing Marx’s critique of Hegel. However, the manuscripts are best known for their account of alienated labour. Here Marx famously depicts the worker under capitalism as suffering from four types of alienated labour. First, from the product, which as soon as it is created is taken away from its producer. Second, in productive activity (work) which is experienced as a torment. Third, from species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers. Finally, from other human beings, where the relation of exchange replaces the satisfaction of mutual need. That these categories overlap in some respects is not a surprise given Marx’s remarkable methodological ambition in these writings. Essentially he attempts to apply a Hegelian deduction of categories to economics, trying to demonstrate that all the categories of bourgeois economics — wages, rent, exchange, profit, etc. — are ultimately derived from an analysis of the concept of alienation. Consequently each category of alienated labour is supposed to be deducible from the previous one. However, Marx gets no further than deducing categories of alienated labour from each other. Quite possibly in the course of writing he came to understand that a different methodology is required for approaching economic issues. Nevertheless we are left with a very rich text on the nature of alienated labour. The idea of non-alienation has to be inferred from the negative, with the assistance of one short passage at the end of the text ‘On James Mill’ in which non-alienated labour is briefly described in terms which emphasise both the immediate producer’s enjoyment of production as a confirmation of his or her powers, and also the idea that production is to meet the needs of others, thus confirming for both parties our human essence as mutual dependence. Both sides of our species essence are revealed here: our individual human powers and our membership in the human community.

It is important to understand that for Marx alienation is not merely a matter of subjective feeling, or confusion. The bridge between Marx’s early analysis of alienation and his later social theory is the idea that the alienated individual is ‘a plaything of alien forces’, albeit alien forces which are themselves a product of human action. In our daily lives we take decisions that have unintended consequences, which then combine to create large-scale social forces which may have an utterly unpredicted, and highly damaging, effect. In Marx’s view the institutions of capitalism — themselves the consequences of human behaviour — come back to structure our future behaviour, determining the possibilities of our action. For example, for as long as a capitalist intends to stay in business he must exploit his workers to the legal limit. Whether or not wracked by guilt the capitalist must act as a ruthless exploiter. Similarly the worker must take the best job on offer; there is simply no other sane option. But by doing this we reinforce the very structures that oppress us. The urge to transcend this condition, and to take collective control of our destiny — whatever that would mean in practice — is one of the motivating and sustaining elements of Marx’s social analysis.

2.4 ‘Theses on Feuerbach’

The Theses on Feuerbach contain one of Marx’s most memorable remarks: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it” (thesis 11). However the eleven theses as a whole provide, in the compass of a couple of pages, a remarkable digest of Marx’s reaction to the philosophy of his day. Several of these have been touched on already (for example, the discussions of religion in theses 4, 6 and 7, and revolution in thesis 3) so here I will concentrate only on the first, most overtly philosophical, thesis.

In the first thesis Marx states his objections to ‘all hitherto existing’ materialism and idealism. Materialism is complimented for understanding the physical reality of the world, but is criticised for ignoring the active role of the human subject in creating the world we perceive. Idealism, at least as developed by Hegel, understands the active nature of the human subject, but confines it to thought or contemplation: the world is created through the categories we impose upon it. Marx combines the insights of both traditions to propose a view in which human beings do indeed create — or at least transform — the world they find themselves in, but this transformation happens not in thought but through actual material activity; not through the imposition of sublime concepts but through the sweat of their brow, with picks and shovels. This historical version of materialism, which transcends and thus rejects all existing philosophical thought, is the foundation of Marx’s later theory of history. As Marx puts it in the 1844 Manuscripts, ‘Industry is the real historical relationship of nature … to man’. This thought, derived from reflection on the history of philosophy, together with his experience of social and economic realities, as a journalist, sets the agenda for all Marx’s future work.

Capital Volume 1 begins with an analysis of the idea of commodity production. A commodity is defined as a useful external object, produced for exchange on a market. Thus two necessary conditions for commodity production are the existence of a market, in which exchange can take place, and a social division of labour, in which different people produce different products, without which there would be no motivation for exchange. Marx suggests that commodities have both use-value — a use, in other words — and an exchange-value — initially to be understood as their price. Use value can easily be understood, so Marx says, but he insists that exchange value is a puzzling phenomenon, and relative exchange values need to be explained. Why does a quantity of one commodity exchange for a given quantity of another commodity? His explanation is in terms of the labour input required to produce the commodity, or rather, the socially necessary labour, which is labour exerted at the average level of intensity and productivity for that branch of activity within the economy. Thus the labour theory of value asserts that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Marx provides a two stage argument for the labour theory of value. The first stage is to argue that if two objects can be compared in the sense of being put on either side of an equals sign, then there must be a ‘third thing of identical magnitude in both of them’ to which they are both reducible. As commodities can be exchanged against each other, there must, Marx argues, be a third thing that they have in common. This then motivates the second stage, which is a search for the appropriate ‘third thing’, which is labour in Marx’s view, as the only plausible common element. Both steps of the argument are, of course, highly contestable.

Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx’s own solution relies on the idea of exploitation of the worker. In setting up conditions of production the capitalist purchases the worker’s labour power — his ability to labour — for the day. The cost of this commodity is determined in the same way as the cost of every other; i.e. in terms of the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce it. In this case the value of a day’s labour power is the value of the commodities necessary to keep the worker alive for a day. Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce. Thus the first four hours of the working day is spent on producing value equivalent to the value of the wages the worker will be paid. This is known as necessary labour. Any work the worker does above this is known as surplus labour, producing surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx’s analysis labour power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital. Other commodities simply pass their value on to the finished commodities, but do not create any extra value. They are known as constant capital. Profit, then, is the result of the labour performed by the worker beyond that necessary to create the value of his or her wages. This is the surplus value theory of profit.

It appears to follow from this analysis that as industry becomes more mechanised, using more constant capital and less variable capital, the rate of profit ought to fall. For as a proportion less capital will be advanced on labour, and only labour can create value. In Capital Volume 3 Marx does indeed make the prediction that the rate of profit will fall over time, and this is one of the factors which leads to the downfall of capitalism. (However, as pointed out by Marx’s able expositor Paul Sweezy in The Theory of Capitalist Development , the analysis is problematic.) A further consequence of this analysis is a difficulty for the theory that Marx did recognise, and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to meet also in Capital Volume 3. It follows from the analysis so far that labour intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those which use less labour. Not only is this empirically false, it is theoretically unacceptable. Accordingly, Marx argued that in real economic life prices vary in a systematic way from values. Providing the mathematics to explain this is known as the transformation problem, and Marx’s own attempt suffers from technical difficulties. Although there are known techniques for solving this problem now (albeit with unwelcome side consequences), we should recall that the labour theory of value was initially motivated as an intuitively plausible theory of price. But when the connection between price and value is rendered as indirect as it is in the final theory, the intuitive motivation of the theory drains away. A further objection is that Marx’s assertion that only labour can create surplus value is unsupported by any argument or analysis, and can be argued to be merely an artifact of the nature of his presentation. Any commodity can be picked to play a similar role. Consequently with equal justification one could set out a corn theory of value, arguing that corn has the unique power of creating more value than it costs. Formally this would be identical to the labour theory of value. Nevertheless, the claims that somehow labour is responsible for the creation of value, and that profit is the consequence of exploitation, remain intuitively powerful, even if they are difficult to establish in detail.

However, even if the labour theory of value is considered discredited, there are elements of his theory that remain of worth. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, in An Essay on Marxian Economics , picked out two aspects of particular note. First, Marx’s refusal to accept that capitalism involves a harmony of interests between worker and capitalist, replacing this with a class based analysis of the worker’s struggle for better wages and conditions of work, versus the capitalist’s drive for ever greater profits. Second, Marx’s denial that there is any long-run tendency to equilibrium in the market, and his descriptions of mechanisms which underlie the trade-cycle of boom and bust. Both provide a salutary corrective to aspects of orthodox economic theory.

4. Theory of History

Marx did not set out his theory of history in great detail. Accordingly, it has to be constructed from a variety of texts, both those where he attempts to apply a theoretical analysis to past and future historical events, and those of a more purely theoretical nature. Of the latter, the 1859 Preface to A Critique of Political Economy has achieved canonical status. However, The German Ideology , co-written with Engels in 1845, is a vital early source in which Marx first sets out the basics of the outlook of historical materialism. We shall briefly outline both texts, and then look at the reconstruction of Marx’s theory of history in the hands of his philosophically most influential recent exponent, G.A. Cohen, who builds on the interpretation of the early Russian Marxist Plekhanov.

We should, however, be aware that Cohen’s interpretation is not universally accepted. Cohen provided his reconstruction of Marx partly because he was frustrated with existing Hegelian-inspired ‘dialectical’ interpretations of Marx, and what he considered to be the vagueness of the influential works of Louis Althusser, neither of which, he felt, provided a rigorous account of Marx’s views. However, some scholars believe that the interpretation that we shall focus on is faulty precisely for its lack of attention to the dialectic. One aspect of this criticism is that Cohen’s understanding has a surprisingly small role for the concept of class struggle, which is often felt to be central to Marx’s theory of history. Cohen’s explanation for this is that the 1859 Preface, on which his interpretation is based, does not give a prominent role to class struggle, and indeed it is not explicitly mentioned. Yet this reasoning is problematic for it is possible that Marx did not want to write in a manner that would engage the concerns of the police censor, and, indeed, a reader aware of the context may be able to detect an implicit reference to class struggle through the inclusion of such phrases as “then begins an era of social revolution,” and “the ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out”. Hence it does not follow that Marx himself thought that the concept of class struggle was relatively unimportant. Furthermore, when A Critique of Political Economy was replaced by Capital , Marx made no attempt to keep the 1859 Preface in print, and its content is reproduced just as a very much abridged footnote in Capital . Nevertheless we shall concentrate here on Cohen’s interpretation as no other account has been set out with comparable rigour, precision and detail.

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels contrast their new materialist method with the idealism that had characterised previous German thought. Accordingly, they take pains to set out the ‘premises of the materialist method’. They start, they say, from ‘real human beings’, emphasising that human beings are essentially productive, in that they must produce their means of subsistence in order to satisfy their material needs. The satisfaction of needs engenders new needs of both a material and social kind, and forms of society arise corresponding to the state of development of human productive forces. Material life determines, or at least ‘conditions’ social life, and so the primary direction of social explanation is from material production to social forms, and thence to forms of consciousness. As the material means of production develop, ‘modes of co-operation’ or economic structures rise and fall, and eventually communism will become a real possibility once the plight of the workers and their awareness of an alternative motivates them sufficiently to become revolutionaries.

In the sketch of The German Ideology , all the key elements of historical materialism are present, even if the terminology is not yet that of Marx’s more mature writings. Marx’s statement in 1859 Preface renders much the same view in sharper form. Cohen’s reconstruction of Marx’s view in the Preface begins from what Cohen calls the Development Thesis, which is pre-supposed, rather than explicitly stated in the Preface. This is the thesis that the productive forces tend to develop, in the sense of becoming more powerful, over time. This states not that they always do develop, but that there is a tendency for them to do so. The productive forces are the means of production, together with productively applicable knowledge: technology, in other words. The next thesis is the primacy thesis, which has two aspects. The first states that the nature of the economic structure is explained by the level of development of the productive forces, and the second that the nature of the superstructure — the political and legal institutions of society— is explained by the nature of the economic structure. The nature of a society’s ideology, which is to say the religious, artistic, moral and philosophical beliefs contained within society, is also explained in terms of its economic structure, although this receives less emphasis in Cohen’s interpretation. Indeed many activities may well combine aspects of both the superstructure and ideology: a religion is constituted by both institutions and a set of beliefs.

Revolution and epoch change is understood as the consequence of an economic structure no longer being able to continue to develop the forces of production. At this point the development of the productive forces is said to be fettered, and, according to the theory once an economic structure fetters development it will be revolutionised — ‘burst asunder’ — and eventually replaced with an economic structure better suited to preside over the continued development of the forces of production.

In outline, then, the theory has a pleasing simplicity and power. It seems plausible that human productive power develops over time, and plausible too that economic structures exist for as long as they develop the productive forces, but will be replaced when they are no longer capable of doing this. Yet severe problems emerge when we attempt to put more flesh on these bones.

Prior to Cohen’s work, historical materialism had not been regarded as a coherent view within English-language political philosophy. The antipathy is well summed up with the closing words of H.B. Acton’s The Illusion of the Epoch : “Marxism is a philosophical farrago”. One difficulty taken particularly seriously by Cohen is an alleged inconsistency between the explanatory primacy of the forces of production, and certain claims made elsewhere by Marx which appear to give the economic structure primacy in explaining the development of the productive forces. For example, in The Communist Manifesto Marx states that: ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production.’ This appears to give causal and explanatory primacy to the economic structure — capitalism — which brings about the development of the forces of production. Cohen accepts that, on the surface at least, this generates a contradiction. Both the economic structure and the development of the productive forces seem to have explanatory priority over each other.

Unsatisfied by such vague resolutions as ‘determination in the last instance’, or the idea of ‘dialectical’ connections, Cohen self-consciously attempts to apply the standards of clarity and rigour of analytic philosophy to provide a reconstructed version of historical materialism.

The key theoretical innovation is to appeal to the notion of functional explanation (also sometimes called ‘consequence explanation’). The essential move is cheerfully to admit that the economic structure does indeed develop the productive forces, but to add that this, according to the theory, is precisely why we have capitalism (when we do). That is, if capitalism failed to develop the productive forces it would disappear. And, indeed, this fits beautifully with historical materialism. For Marx asserts that when an economic structure fails to develop the productive forces — when it ‘fetters’ the productive forces — it will be revolutionised and the epoch will change. So the idea of ‘fettering’ becomes the counterpart to the theory of functional explanation. Essentially fettering is what happens when the economic structure becomes dysfunctional.

Now it is apparent that this renders historical materialism consistent. Yet there is a question as to whether it is at too high a price. For we must ask whether functional explanation is a coherent methodological device. The problem is that we can ask what it is that makes it the case that an economic structure will only persist for as long as it develops the productive forces. Jon Elster has pressed this criticism against Cohen very hard. If we were to argue that there is an agent guiding history who has the purpose that the productive forces should be developed as much as possible then it would make sense that such an agent would intervene in history to carry out this purpose by selecting the economic structures which do the best job. However, it is clear that Marx makes no such metaphysical assumptions. Elster is very critical — sometimes of Marx, sometimes of Cohen — of the idea of appealing to ‘purposes’ in history without those being the purposes of anyone.

Cohen is well aware of this difficulty, but defends the use of functional explanation by comparing its use in historical materialism with its use in evolutionary biology. In contemporary biology it is commonplace to explain the existence of the stripes of a tiger, or the hollow bones of a bird, by pointing to the function of these features. Here we have apparent purposes which are not the purposes of anyone. The obvious counter, however, is that in evolutionary biology we can provide a causal story to underpin these functional explanations; a story involving chance variation and survival of the fittest. Therefore these functional explanations are sustained by a complex causal feedback loop in which dysfunctional elements tend to be filtered out in competition with better functioning elements. Cohen calls such background accounts ‘elaborations’ and he concedes that functional explanations are in need of elaborations. But he points out that standard causal explanations are equally in need of elaborations. We might, for example, be satisfied with the explanation that the vase broke because it was dropped on the floor, but a great deal of further information is needed to explain why this explanation works. Consequently, Cohen claims that we can be justified in offering a functional explanation even when we are in ignorance of its elaboration. Indeed, even in biology detailed causal elaborations of functional explanations have been available only relatively recently. Prior to Darwin, or arguably Lamark, the only candidate causal elaboration was to appeal to God’s purposes. Darwin outlined a very plausible mechanism, but having no genetic theory was not able to elaborate it into a detailed account. Our knowledge remains incomplete to this day. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly reasonable to say that birds have hollow bones in order to facilitate flight. Cohen’s point is that the weight of evidence that organisms are adapted to their environment would permit even a pre-Darwinian atheist to assert this functional explanation with justification. Hence one can be justified in offering a functional explanation even in absence of a candidate elaboration: if there is sufficient weight of inductive evidence.

At this point the issue, then, divides into a theoretical question and an empirical one. The empirical question is whether or not there is evidence that forms of society exist only for as long as they advance productive power, and are replaced by revolution when they fail. Here, one must admit, the empirical record is patchy at best, and there appear to have been long periods of stagnation, even regression, when dysfunctional economic structures were not revolutionised.

The theoretical issue is whether a plausible elaborating explanation is available to underpin Marxist functional explanations. Here there is something of a dilemma. In the first instance it is tempting to try to mimic the elaboration given in the Darwinian story, and appeal to chance variations and survival of the fittest. In this case ‘fittest’ would mean ‘most able to preside over the development of the productive forces’. Chance variation would be a matter of people trying out new types of economic relations. On this account new economic structures begin through experiment, but thrive and persist through their success in developing the productive forces. However the problem is that such an account would seem to introduce a larger element of contingency than Marx seeks, for it is essential to Marx’s thought that one should be able to predict the eventual arrival of communism. Within Darwinian theory there is no warrant for long-term predictions, for everything depends on the contingencies of particular situations. A similar heavy element of contingency would be inherited by a form of historical materialism developed by analogy with evolutionary biology. The dilemma, then, is that the best model for developing the theory makes predictions based on the theory unsound, yet the whole point of the theory is predictive. Hence one must either look for an alternative means of producing elaborating explanation, or give up the predictive ambitions of the theory.

The driving force of history, in Cohen’s reconstruction of Marx, is the development of the productive forces, the most important of which is technology. But what is it that drives such development? Ultimately, in Cohen’s account, it is human rationality. Human beings have the ingenuity to apply themselves to develop means to address the scarcity they find. This on the face of it seems very reasonable. Yet there are difficulties. As Cohen himself acknowledges, societies do not always do what would be rational for an individual to do. Co-ordination problems may stand in our way, and there may be structural barriers. Furthermore, it is relatively rare for those who introduce new technologies to be motivated by the need to address scarcity. Rather, under capitalism, the profit motive is the key. Of course it might be argued that this is the social form that the material need to address scarcity takes under capitalism. But still one may raise the question whether the need to address scarcity always has the influence that it appears to have taken on in modern times. For example, a ruling class’s absolute determination to hold on to power may have led to economically stagnant societies. Alternatively, it might be thought that a society may put religion or the protection of traditional ways of life ahead of economic needs. This goes to the heart of Marx’s theory that man is an essentially productive being and that the locus of interaction with the world is industry. As Cohen himself later argued in essays such as ‘Reconsidering Historical Materialism’, the emphasis on production may appear one-sided, and ignore other powerful elements in human nature. Such a criticism chimes with a criticism from the previous section; that the historical record may not, in fact, display the tendency to growth in the productive forces assumed by the theory.

Many defenders of Marx will argue that the problems stated are problems for Cohen’s interpretation of Marx, rather than for Marx himself. It is possible to argue, for example, that Marx did not have a general theory of history, but rather was a social scientist observing and encouraging the transformation of capitalism into communism as a singular event. And it is certainly true that when Marx analyses a particular historical episode, as he does in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon , any idea of fitting events into a fixed pattern of history seems very far from Marx’s mind. On other views Marx did have a general theory of history but it is far more flexible and less determinate than Cohen insists (Miller). And finally, as noted, there are critics who believe that Cohen’s interpretation is entirely wrong-headed (Sayers).

The issue of Marx and morality poses a conundrum. On reading Marx’s works at all periods of his life, there appears to be the strongest possible distaste towards bourgeois capitalist society, and an undoubted endorsement of future communist society. Yet the terms of this antipathy and endorsement are far from clear. Despite expectations, Marx never says that capitalism is unjust. Neither does he say that communism would be a just form of society. In fact he takes pains to distance himself from those who engage in a discourse of justice, and makes a conscious attempt to exclude direct moral commentary in his own works. The puzzle is why this should be, given the weight of indirect moral commentary one finds.

There are, initially, separate questions, concerning Marx’s attitude to capitalism and to communism. There are also separate questions concerning his attitude to ideas of justice, and to ideas of morality more broadly concerned. This, then, generates four questions: (1) Did Marx think capitalism unjust?; (2) did he think that capitalism could be morally criticised on other grounds?; (3) did he think that communism would be just? (4) did he think it could be morally approved of on other grounds? These are the questions we shall consider in this section.

The initial argument that Marx must have thought that capitalism is unjust is based on the observation that Marx argued that all capitalist profit is ultimately derived from the exploitation of the worker. Capitalism’s dirty secret is that it is not a realm of harmony and mutual benefit but a system in which one class systematically extracts profit from another. How could this fail to be unjust? Yet it is notable that Marx never concludes this, and in Capital he goes as far as to say that such exchange is ‘by no means an injustice’.

Allen Wood has argued that Marx took this approach because his general theoretical approach excludes any trans-epochal standpoint from which one can comment on the justice of an economic system. Even though one can criticize particular behaviour from within an economic structure as unjust (and theft under capitalism would be an example) it is not possible to criticise capitalism as a whole. This is a consequence of Marx’s analysis of the role of ideas of justice from within historical materialism. That is to say, juridical institutions are part of the superstructure, and ideas of justice are ideological, and the role of both the superstructure and ideology, in the functionalist reading of historical materialism adopted here, is to stabilise the economic structure. Consequently, to state that something is just under capitalism is simply a judgement applied to those elements of the system that will tend to have the effect of advancing capitalism. According to Marx, in any society the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class; the core of the theory of ideology.

Ziyad Husami, however, argues that Wood is mistaken, ignoring the fact that for Marx ideas undergo a double determination in that the ideas of the non-ruling class may be very different from those of the ruling class. Of course it is the ideas of the ruling class that receive attention and implementation, but this does not mean that other ideas do not exist. Husami goes as far as to argue that members of the proletariat under capitalism have an account of justice which matches communism. From this privileged standpoint of the proletariat, which is also Marx’s standpoint, capitalism is unjust, and so it follows that Marx thought capitalism unjust.

Plausible though it may sound, Husami’s argument fails to account for two related points. First, it cannot explain why Marx never described capitalism as unjust, and second, it does not account for the distance Marx wanted to place between his own scientific socialism, and that of the utopian socialists who argued for the injustice of capitalism. Hence one cannot avoid the conclusion that the ‘official’ view of Marx is that capitalism is not unjust.

Nevertheless, this leaves us with a puzzle. Much of Marx’s description of capitalism — his use of the words ‘embezzlement’, ‘robbery’ and ‘exploitation’ — belie the official account. Arguably, the only satisfactory way of understanding this issue is, once more, from G.A. Cohen, who proposes that Marx believed that capitalism was unjust, but did not believe that he believed it was unjust (Cohen 1983). In other words, Marx, like so many of us, did not have perfect knowledge of his own mind. In his explicit reflections on the justice of capitalism he was able to maintain his official view. But in less guarded moments his real view slips out, even if never in explicit language. Such an interpretation is bound to be controversial, but it makes good sense of the texts.

Whatever one concludes on the question of whether Marx thought capitalism unjust, it is, nevertheless, obvious that Marx thought that capitalism was not the best way for human beings to live. Points made in his early writings remain present throughout his writings, if no longer connected to an explicit theory of alienation. The worker finds work a torment, suffers poverty, overwork and lack of fulfillment and freedom. People do not relate to each other as humans should.

Does this amount to a moral criticism of capitalism or not? In the absence of any special reason to argue otherwise, it simply seems obvious that Marx’s critique is a moral one. Capitalism impedes human flourishing.

Marx, though, once more refrained from making this explicit; he seemed to show no interest in locating his criticism of capitalism in any of the traditions of moral philosophy, or explaining how he was generating a new tradition. There may have been two reasons for his caution. The first was that while there were bad things about capitalism, there is, from a world historical point of view, much good about it too. For without capitalism, communism would not be possible. Capitalism is to be transcended, not abolished, and this may be difficult to convey in the terms of moral philosophy.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, we need to return to the contrast between scientific and utopian socialism. The utopians appealed to universal ideas of truth and justice to defend their proposed schemes, and their theory of transition was based on the idea that appealing to moral sensibilities would be the best, perhaps only, way of bringing about the new chosen society. Marx wanted to distance himself from this tradition of utopian thought, and the key point of distinction was to argue that the route to understanding the possibilities of human emancipation lay in the analysis of historical and social forces, not in morality. Hence, for Marx, any appeal to morality was theoretically a backward step.

This leads us now to Marx’s assessment of communism. Would communism be a just society? In considering Marx’s attitude to communism and justice there are really only two viable possibilities: either he thought that communism would be a just society or he thought that the concept of justice would not apply: that communism would transcend justice.

Communism is described by Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme , as a society in which each person should contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need. This certainly sounds like a theory of justice, and could be adopted as such. However it is possibly truer to Marx’s thought to say that this is part of an account in which communism transcends justice, as Lukes has argued.

If we start with the idea that the point of ideas of justice is to resolve disputes, then a society without disputes would have no need or place for justice. We can see this by reflecting upon Hume’s idea of the circumstances of justice. Hume argued that if there was enormous material abundance — if everyone could have whatever they wanted without invading another’s share — we would never have devised rules of justice. And, of course, Marx often suggested that communism would be a society of such abundance. But Hume also suggested that justice would not be needed in other circumstances; if there were complete fellow-feeling between all human beings. Again there would be no conflict and no need for justice. Of course, one can argue whether either material abundance or human fellow-feeling to this degree would be possible, but the point is that both arguments give a clear sense in which communism transcends justice.

Nevertheless we remain with the question of whether Marx thought that communism could be commended on other moral grounds. On a broad understanding, in which morality, or perhaps better to say ethics, is concerning with the idea of living well, it seems that communism can be assessed favourably in this light. One compelling argument is that Marx’s career simply makes no sense unless we can attribute such a belief to him. But beyond this we can be brief in that the considerations adduced in section 2 above apply again. Communism clearly advances human flourishing, in Marx’s view. The only reason for denying that, in Marx’s vision, it would amount to a good society is a theoretical antipathy to the word ‘good’. And here the main point is that, in Marx’s view, communism would not be brought about by high-minded benefactors of humanity. Quite possibly his determination to retain this point of difference between himself and the Utopian socialists led him to disparage the importance of morality to a degree that goes beyond the call of theoretical necessity.

Primary Literature

• Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Berlin, 1975–.
• –––, Collected Works , New York and London: International Publishers. 1975.
• –––, Selected Works , 2 Volumes, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962.
• Marx, Karl, Karl Marx: Selected Writings , 2 nd edition, David McLellan (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Secondary Literature

See McLellan 1973 and Wheen 1999 for biographies of Marx, and see Singer 2000 and Wolff 2002 for general introductions.

• Acton, H.B., 1955, The Illusion of the Epoch , London: Cohen and West.
• Althusser, Louis, 1969, For Marx , London: Penguin.
• Althusser, Louis, and Balibar, Etienne, 1970, Reading Capital , London: NLB.
• Arthur, C.J., 1986, Dialectics of Labour , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Avineri, Shlomo, 1970, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bottomore, Tom (ed.), 1979, Karl Marx , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Brudney, Daniel, 1998, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Carver, Terrell, 1982, Marx’s Social Theory , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Carver, Terrell (ed.), 1991, The Cambridge Companion to Marx , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Carver, Terrell, 1998, The Post-Modern Marx , Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Cohen, Joshua, 1982, ‘Review of G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History ’, Journal of Philosophy , 79: 253–273.
• Cohen, G.A., 1983, ‘Review of Allen Wood, Karl Marx ’, Mind , 92: 440–445.
• Cohen, G.A., 1988, History, Labour and Freedom , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Cohen, G.A., 2001, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence , 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Desai, Megnad, 2002, Marx’s Revenge , London: Verso.
• Elster, Jon, 1985, Making Sense of Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Geras, Norman, 1989, ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice,’ in A. Callinicos (ed.), Marxist Theory , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Hook, Sidney, 1950, From Hegel to Marx , New York: Humanities Press.
• Husami, Ziyad, 1978, ‘Marx on Distributive Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs , 8: 27–64.
• Kamenka, Eugene, 1962, The Ethical Foundations of Marxism London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Kolakowski, Leszek, 1978, Main Currents of Marxism , 3 volumes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Leopold, David, 2007, The Young Karl Marx , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lukes, Stephen, 1987, Marxism and Morality , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Maguire, John, 1972, Marx’s Paris Writings , Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
• McLellan, David, 1970, Marx Before Marxism , London: Macmillan.
• McLellan, David, 1973, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought , London: Macmillan.
• Miller, Richard, 1984, Analyzing Marx , Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Peffer, Rodney, 1990, Marxism, Morality and Social Justice , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Plekhanov, G.V., (1947 [1895]), The Development of the Monist View of History London: Lawrence and Wishart.
• Robinson, Joan, 1942, An Essay on Marxian Economics , London: Macmillan.
• Roemer, John, 1982, A General Theory of Exploitation and Class , Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press.
• Roemer, John (ed.), 1986, Analytical Marxism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rosen, Michael, 1996, On Voluntary Servitude , Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Sayers, Sean, 1990, ‘Marxism and the Dialectical Method: A Critique of G.A. Cohen’, in S.Sayers (ed.), Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader , London: Routledge.
• Singer, Peter, 2000, Marx: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sober, E., Levine, A., and Wright, E.O. 1992, Reconstructing Marx , London: Verso.
• Sweezy, Paul, 1942 [1970], The Theory of Capitalist Development , New York: Monthly Review Press.
• Wheen, Francis, 1999, Karl Marx , London: Fourth Estate.
• Wolff, Jonathan, 2002, Why Read Marx Today? , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wolff, Robert Paul, 1984, Understanding Marx , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Wood, Allen, 1981, Karl Marx , London: Routledge; second edition, 2004.
• Wood, Allen, 1972, ‘The Marxian Critique of Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs , 1: 244–82.

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Character and significance of Karl Marx

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At Marx’s funeral in Highgate Cemetery , Engels declared that Marx had made two great discoveries, the law of development of human history and the law of motion of bourgeois society. But “Marx was before all else a revolutionist.” He was “the best-hated and most-calumniated man of his time,” yet he also died “beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers.”

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The contradictory emotions Marx engendered are reflected in the sometimes conflicting aspects of his character. Marx was a combination of the Promethean rebel and the rigorous intellectual . He gave most persons an impression of intellectual arrogance . A Russian writer, Pavel Annenkov, who observed Marx in debate in 1846 recalled that “he spoke only in the imperative , brooking no contradiction,” and seemed to be “the personification of a democratic dictator such as might appear before one in moments of fantasy.” But Marx obviously felt uneasy before mass audiences and avoided the atmosphere of factional controversies at congresses. He went to no demonstrations, his wife remarked, and rarely spoke at public meetings. He kept away from the congresses of the International where the rival socialist groups debated important resolutions. He was a “small groups” man, most at home in the atmosphere of the General Council or on the staff of a newspaper , where his character could impress itself forcefully on a small body of coworkers. At the same time he avoided meeting distinguished scholars with whom he might have discussed questions of economics and sociology on a footing of intellectual equality. Despite his broad intellectual sweep, he was prey to obsessive ideas such as that the British foreign minister, Lord Palmerston , was an agent of the Russian government. He was determined not to let bourgeois society make “a money-making machine” out of him, yet he submitted to living on the largess of Engels and the bequests of relatives. He remained the eternal student in his personal habits and way of life, even to the point of joining two friends in a students’ prank during which they systematically broke four or five streetlamps in a London street and then fled from the police. He was a great reader of novels, especially those of Sir Walter Scott and Balzac; and the family made a cult of Shakespeare. He was an affectionate father, saying that he admired Jesus for his love of children, but sacrificed the lives and health of his own. Of his seven children, three daughters grew to maturity. His favourite daughter, Eleanor, worried him with her nervous, brooding, emotional character and her desire to be an actress. Another shadow was cast on Marx’s domestic life by the birth to their loyal servant, Helene Demuth, of an illegitimate son, Frederick; Engels as he was dying disclosed to Eleanor that Marx had been the father. Above all, Marx was a fighter, willing to sacrifice anything in the battle for his conception of a better society. He regarded struggle as the law of life and existence.

The influence of Marx’s ideas has been enormous. Marx’s masterpiece, Das Kapital , the “Bible of the working class,” as it was officially described in a resolution of the International Working Men’s Association , was published in 1867 in Berlin and received a second edition in 1873. Only the first volume was completed and published in Marx’s lifetime. The second and third volumes, unfinished by Marx, were edited by Engels and published in 1885 and 1894. The economic categories he employed were those of the classical British economics of David Ricardo , but Marx used them in accordance with his dialectical method to argue that bourgeois society, like every social organism, must follow its inevitable path of development. Through the working of such immanent tendencies as the declining rate of profit, capitalism would die and be replaced by another, higher, society. The most memorable pages in Das Kapital are the descriptive passages, culled from Parliamentary Blue Books, on the misery of the English working class. Marx believed that this misery would increase, while at the same time the monopoly of capital would become a fetter upon production until finally “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”

Marx never claimed to have discovered the existence of classes and class struggles in modern society. “Bourgeois” historians, he acknowledged, had described them long before he had. He did claim, however, to have proved that each phase in the development of production was associated with a corresponding class structure and that the struggle of classes led necessarily to the dictatorship of the proletariat , ushering in the advent of a classless society . Marx took up the very different versions of socialism current in the early 19th century and welded them together into a doctrine that continued to be the dominant version of socialism for half a century after his death. His emphasis on the influence of economic structure on historical development has proved to be of lasting significance.

Although Marx stressed economic issues in his writings, his major impact has been in the fields of sociology and history. Marx’s most important contribution to sociological theory was his general mode of analysis, the “dialectical” model, which regards every social system as having within it immanent forces that give rise to “contradictions” (disequilibria) that can be resolved only by a new social system. Neo-Marxists, who no longer accept the economic reasoning in Das Kapital , are still guided by this model in their approach to capitalist society. In this sense, Marx’s mode of analysis, like those of Thomas Malthus , Herbert Spencer , or Vilfredo Pareto , has become one of the theoretical structures that are the heritage of the social scientist.

Karl Marx: Life, Philosophy and Legacy

Biography | Influences | Core Philosophy | Essential Works | Reception | Criticisms | Legacy

Karl Marx (1818-1883) is one of the most influential thinkers in history, whose ideas have left an indelible mark on political, economic and social thought. His significance lies in his profound critique of capitalism, advocating for a revolutionary transformation of the existing social order.

Karl Marx’s most famous contribution is the development of the theory of communism, which has had a transformative impact on the world. Together with Friedrich Engels , he co-authored The Communist Manifesto , outlining their vision of a classless society where the means of production are collectively owned and operated. Central to this concept is the abolition of private property, aiming to eliminate the exploitation of the labor force and the unequal distribution of wealth.

Marx argued that throughout history, societies have progressed through stages driven by class struggle, with the ruling class controlling the means of production and exploiting the working class. He believed that capitalism, with its inherent contradictions, would eventually lead to its own downfall, paving the way for a socialist revolution that would eventually transition into a communist society.

Marx’s vision of communism sought to establish a society based on cooperation, equality and the fulfillment of individual potential, free from the constraints of class divisions and oppression.

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Karl Marx was born in Germany on May 5, 1818. He came from a middle-class family with a Jewish background, but his father, Heinrich Marx, converted to Protestantism to avoid social discrimination. Karl’s father worked as a lawyer, providing a relatively comfortable upbringing for him. Despite this, he grew up in a politically tumultuous era, witnessing the rise of nationalism and various social inequalities.

Marx began his academic journey at the University of Bonn in 1835, where he initially studied law. However, he found himself increasingly drawn to philosophy and literature. After a year, he transferred to the University of Berlin, in 1836, to focus on philosophy and history. There, he was exposed to the works of German philosophers like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , whose ideas would significantly influence his own intellectual framework.

Following university, Marx pursued a career in journalism and writing. In 1842, he became a journalist for the Rheinische Zeitung, a newspaper in Cologne. During this time, he started delving into political and economic issues, criticizing the prevailing societal conditions and exploring socialist ideas.

A significant turning point in Marx’s career came when he met Friedrich Engels in 1844. The two formed a lifelong friendship and intellectual partnership, collaborating on numerous works. Engels shared Marx’s passion for social change and became an essential collaborator in the development of Marxist thought.

Throughout his life, he was actively involved in political and social movements, as he advocated for workers’ rights and participated in various radical circles. His prolific writings during this period earned him a reputation as a prominent socialist thinker and laid the groundwork for his later philosophical works.

Intellectual Influences

In the 19 th century, Europe was undergoing significant political, economic and social transformations. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, ushering in a new era of urbanization and mechanization, and the rapid productivity growth brought forth immense wealth for some but also led to harsh working conditions for others. This socioeconomic system fueled class divisions, with the elite class accumulating wealth and influence while the working class faced poor working conditions, labor exploitation and poverty.

Amidst these developments, social unrest and political movements advocating for workers’ rights and social reforms gained momentum. Labor unions and socialist organizations emerged, seeking fair wages, better conditions and a more equitable distribution of wealth.

In this socioeconomic context, Marx’s philosophical ideas were shaped by a variety of intellectual influences. One of the most significant influences was the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel , whose dialectical method, encompassing the historical development of society, greatly impacted Marx’s thinking. Hegel’s dialectics attested to the role of contradictions and conflicts in driving historical progress, which Marx’s applied to understanding societal change through class struggle. The Young Hegelians, for their part, also played a role, as they challenged conservative and traditional views, advocating for social change and criticizing established institutions, including religion and the state. Among them was Ludwig Feuerbach, a Young Hegelian philosopher who critiqued religious and idealist philosophies. Feuerbach’s materialistic perspective, which posited that human consciousness is shaped by material conditions, resonated with Marx and contributed to the development of his own materialist view of history.

Overall, the historical and intellectual context in which Marx lived was marked by socioeconomic change and social upheaval. These influences played a crucial role in molding the philosophical framework that would become Marxism.

Core Philosophical Framework

The key principles of Marxist thought – materialism and historical materialism, the dialectical method, and the labor theory of value – not only underpin Marx’s critique of capitalism but also provide a framework, in a broader sense, for understanding the transformation of societies.

Materialism and Historical Materialism

Marx believed that the material realities of production – such as technology, resources and economic structures – fundamentally influence the development of social institutions and ideas. This perspective, asserting the primacy of material conditions in shaping human society and culture, is known as materialism.

Historical materialism, an extension of this notion, provides a comprehensive analysis of social change and development throughout history. According to Marx, the evolution of societies is driven by class struggles, where conflicts between the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) and the oppressed working class (the proletariat) propel historical progress .

These clashes result from changes in the means of production, leading to the rise and fall of different socioeconomic systems, such as feudalism, capitalism and, ultimately, communism.

Dialectic View of History

Marx employed the dialectical method, influenced by G.W.F. Hegel , to comprehend the complex and dynamic nature of social reality. The dialectical approach involves examining contradictions and conflicts inherent in societal systems, which lead to transformative processes that result in a new synthesis.

The dialectical method provided a framework for Marx to analyze the contradictions within capitalism and understand how it engenders its own downfall, as he remarked upon the inherent tensions between the bourgeoisie’s pursuit of profit and the proletariat’s struggle for fair wages and better working conditions.

This perpetual class struggle, driven by the dialectical forces of thesis and antithesis, would eventually lead to a new synthesis: a revolution that would replace capitalism with a classless, communist society.

Labor Theory of Value

The labor theory of value is a cornerstone of Marx’s critique of capitalism. According to this theory, the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time invested in its production . In other words, the true worth of a product arises from the labor contributed by workers during its creation, rather than the arbitrary pricing set by capitalists.

Marx argued that capitalism thrives on the exploitation of the proletariat’s labor. The surplus value generated by workers’ labor, over and above their wages, is appropriated by capitalists as profit. This profit, Marx contended, fuels the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, perpetuating social inequality and class divisions.

Karl Marx’s Essential Works

Karl Marx’s essential works – The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital – provide an incisive critique of capitalism, revealing its exploitative nature and calling for a more equitable society, these works set forth the principles of communism.

The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto (1848), co-authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, stands as one of the most influential political documents in history. This seminal work presents a scathing critique of the prevailing socio-economic conditions of its time and outlines the principles of communism.

The manifesto begins by analyzing historical class struggles, culminating in a sharp delineation of society into two antagonistic classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeoisie, as the ruling class, exploits the labor of the proletariat, leading to growing social inequalities .

In response to these injustices, the manifesto calls for the proletarian revolution, emphasizing the necessity of overthrowing the bourgeoisie’s dominance, and advocates for the establishment of a classless society where private property is abolished, and the means of production are collectively owned and controlled by the workers.

In this communist society, the authors envision a world free from class distinctions and oppressive exploitation.

Das Kapital

Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital , is a monumental three-volume work published between 1867 and 1883. In this comprehensive critique of capitalist economics, the author delves into the intricate workings of the capitalist mode of production, revealing its underlying contradictions.

In the first volume, he examines the concept of commodity and the labor theory of value, explaining how commodities are produced for exchange in the market and that their value is derived from the labor time invested in their production. He then explores the concept of surplus value, where capitalists extract profit from the labor of the working class. The subsequent volumes delve into the role of capital and labor in the capitalist system, as Marx meticulously dissects the capitalist production process, the role of machinery and the impact of capital accumulation on the lives of workers.

Das Kapital offers a rigorous analysis of the capitalist economic system and remains, to this day, a foundational text in economic theory – a key resource for understanding the workings of capitalism, as well as the arguments for its transformation.

Influence on Philosophy

Marx’s vision of the ideal society inspired various socialist and communist movements worldwide, shaping political ideologies and sparking revolutionary fervor, as “The Communist Manifesto”’s proposed classless society invigorated numerous workers’ movements and socialist parties across the globe. Marxist movements sought to address social inequality and advocate for the rights of the working class, often calling for economic and social transformation. From the Russian Revolution to the Chinese Revolution, Marxist ideologies played a significant role in historical upheavals and societal transformations.

Marxism also influenced intellectual movements beyond politics. In sociology, for instance, the Marxist approach became a foundational perspective for understanding class divisions and social structures , and in economics the labor theory of value stimulated debates on the nature of price and value.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist thinker, developed the idea of cultural hegemony, emphasizing the role of cultural and ideological domination in maintaining social order, and explored how ruling classes use cultural institutions to shape the beliefs and values of the masses, preserving their dominance. Louis Althusser contributed to Marxist thought by emphasizing the role of ideology in maintaining capitalist systems, elucidating how ideologies permeate society and shape individual consciousness, thus reinforcing social structures. Feminist academics like Silvia Federici and Gloria Jean Watkins incorporated Marxist perspectives into their analyses of gender, class and capitalism. Their works examined how capitalism and patriarchy intertwine, leading to the exploitation and marginalization of women.

The Frankfurt School, a group of intellectuals which included Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, drew upon Marx’s ideas to develop critical theory. They examined how culture and society perpetuated social oppression, and their work contributed to the broader fields of sociology and cultural studies.

Karl Marx’s political, social and economic philosophy has inspired thinkers from varying traditions, as his critique and ideals continue evoke transformative thinking.

Karl Marx gained popularity within labor movements and socialist parties, as workers found in his analysis a compelling framework to understand their exploitation and articulate their demands for social equality and better working conditions. As he challenged the capitalist system and advocated for the overthrow of bourgeois rule, however, he encountered fierce resistance from those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, for the political and economic elite viewed his ideas as a threat to their power and wealth. As a result, Marxists were subject to censorship, persecution and exile in several countries.

Nonetheless, and over time, Marx’s ideas gained traction in academic circles and intellectual discourse, where his critiques of capitalism and contributions to economic and political thought were appreciated. His influence extended to various disciplines, including economics, sociology, history and political science, shaping academic research and debates for decades to come.

His philosophy gained momentum in the decades following his death and his intellectual legacy continued to evolve, inspiring various interpretations of his works. Today, Marxist ideals continue to influence discussions on politics, economics and social justice.

Karl Marx’s economic and political ideas have faced a range of criticisms. While some critiques challenge the theoretical underpinnings of his economic theories, others focus on concerns about the potential risks associated with implementing his political vision.

Karl Marx’s economic theories have been contended on several key notions, namely, the labor theory of value, the predicted inevitable collapse of capitalism and the feasibility of establishing and maintaining a collectively owned society.

Critics argue that the labor theory of value oversimplifies the complexities of market economies, for it asserts that the value of a commodity is solely determined by the labor time invested in its production and thus fails to account for numerous other considerations, such as supply and demand dynamics and subjective preferences of consumers. Marx’s predictions of an inevitable proletarian revolution and the establishment of a communist society are seen as overly deterministic and unrealistic, and the prediction of the inevitable collapse of capitalism on account of its internal contradictions is countered by the fact that capitalism has demonstrated resilience and adaptability over time. In contemporary capitalism, many contend that Marxist thought is outdated, as economies have evolved significantly since his time. Regarding the feasibility of a communist society, the practicality of implementing a classless, stateless and collectively-owned society is questioned. Centralized planning and collective ownership of the means of production may lead to resource misallocation, a lack of incentives for innovation as well as productivity inefficiencies. Historical attempts to establish communist societies have faced challenges in managing large-scale economies.

Criticisms of Karl Marx’s political ideas revolve around concerns regarding the concentration of power and potential authoritarianism in communist regimes. The establishment of a socialist state, as proposed by Marx, could lead to the centralization of power and thus oppressive governance. Historical experiences with communist governments in the 20 th century have given rise to objections, as critics point to a lack of political pluralism, suppression of dissent and instances of human rights abuses. These experiences have contributed to negative perceptions of Marxism, with some associating it with totalitarianism and repressive regimes.

Karl Marx’s philosophy has left a profound and enduring impact on various academic disciplines, revolutionary movements and sociopolitical thought worldwide.

Marxism, as an ideology and analytical framework, has been a driving force behind numerous revolutionary movements throughout history. From the Russian Revolution to anti-colonial struggles, from labor movements to civil rights campaigns, Marx’s ideology has inspired people to seek economic equality and social justice. His vision of a classless, communist society has ignited the imagination of countless activists and revolutionaries worldwide.

In the realm of academia, Marx’s work has played a foundational role in shaping disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science and history. His critique of capitalism and analysis of class struggle continue to be central in understanding economic systems and social structures, and his concept of historical materialism, examining the role of material conditions in shaping societies, contributes to historical and sociological studies.

As societies continue to grapple with persistent socioeconomic issues and inequalities, Marx’s perspective remains relevant: the growing wealth gap, the concentration of power and resources, and the exploitation of labor echo the very concerns that he sought to address. In the 21 st century, his critique of capitalism finds resonance in debates on environmental sustainability, as the capitalist growth models prioritizes profit over ecological well-being, leading to environmental degradation.

While Marxist philosophy has been adapted and reinterpreted over time, the focus on understanding power dynamics, economic structures and societal change endures, and his works continue to challenge accepted paradigms and inspire critical thinking about the world we inhabit.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Karl Marx

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Karl Marx by David Leopold LAST REVIEWED: 15 November 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 30 October 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0265

Karl Marx (b. 1818–d. 1883) was born into a Jewish family living in the Rhineland region of Prussia. Marx’s father was a lawyer whose conversion to Christianity allowed him to continue his career. Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, writing a doctoral thesis in ancient philosophy (on the philosophy of nature in Democritus and Epicurus). His political radicalism made it difficult for him to stay in the German Confederation, and his adult life was made up of three successive exiles—in Paris (1843–1845), Brussels (1845–1848), and London (1849–1883). Throughout that adult life, Marx combined radical political activity, independent scholarship, and financial insecurity, in varying proportions. He was a prolific writer; his (and Engels’s) collected writings, in the most authoritative, and still ongoing, edition (the new MEGA, or Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), will contain 114 volumes when complete. Identifying the central concerns of that body of work is controversial, but they surely include a theory of history, an account of alienation and human nature, a critique of modern capitalism, and a vision of communism. Determining the content of Marx’s views on these, and other, topics is not easy. He could produce clear and precise prose, but much of his output is opaque and less certain. In addition to the complexity and unfamiliarity of some of his ideas, Marx’s writings include texts written in a variety of languages (German, English, and French), targeting long-forgotten contemporaries, published under conditions of censorship, written only for the purposes of self-clarification, and so on. The resulting interpretative difficulties are hopefully eased by the bibliographical recommendations in this article. The literature on Marx’s life, ideas, and influence is considerable, but it has historically been rather mixed in quality. Happily, there is a growing body of interesting and scholarly work on Marx in English, and the recommendations here reflect that development. In order to remain manageable and focused, this article concentrates primarily on English-language literature, and especially on more recent and more “analytical” contributions to that literature.

There are a large number of single-volume introductions to Marx’s thought, but not all of them are insightful or scholarly. However, the works in this section can be recommended on those grounds. Wolff 2002 and Wolff 2010 provide genuine introductions. Elster 1985 offers a broad critical engagement, especially with Marx’s social scientific views. Wood 2004 treats Marx’s philosophical views as a whole. Carver 1991 and Vidal, et al. 2019 are edited collections of essays on central threads in Marx’s work. Kolakowski 2008 provides a survey of the subsequent Marxist tradition.

Carver, Terrell, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Marx . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521366259

A collection of essays, by diverse hands, typically offering reliable introductions to central areas of Marx’s thought (history, politics, and so on). The collection also includes essays on topics—such as Marx and religion (by Denys Turner), and Marx’s aesthetic views (by William Adams)—that are not otherwise well represented in this article.

Elster, Jon. Making Sense of Marx . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Jon Elster’s book is not short, but it offers a clear, critical reconstruction of what might be called the social scientific elements of Marx’s writings. Elster is both provocative and insightful, and he covers Marx’s views on such areas as method, economics, theory of history, class, politics, and the state.

Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents in Marxism . New York: Norton, 2008.

Kolakowski offers a sense of the wider Marxist tradition, providing a historical survey of the founders (Marx and Engels), the golden age (from Kautsky to Lenin), and the breakdown (Stalin and early Western Marxism). A huge intellectual achievement, combining exposition and critical comment. (Given its size, readers may prefer to treat it as a reference resource to consult, rather than a book to be read cover to cover.)

Vidal, Matt, Tony Smith, Tomás Rotta, and Paul Prew, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx . New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

An extensive collection of essays by diverse hands, seeking to provide an overview of Marx’s writings, together with some sense of the subsequent development, and continuing relevance, of his ideas and theories. Offers a systematic coverage of Marx’s theories of history, society, and political economy. Perhaps especially useful in providing accessible and contemporary accounts of Marx’s critique of political economy.

Wolff, Jonathan. Why Read Marx Today? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Jonathan Wolff offers a short but highly readable and consistently intelligent engagement with Marx’s critical and constructive views, broadly recommending Marx the social critic and skeptical of Marx the prophet of future communist society.

Wolff, Jonathan. “ Karl Marx .” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2010.

The shortest of the general introductions to Marx recommended here, but characteristically pellucid and not lacking in sophistication.

Wood, Allen W. Karl Marx . 2d exp. ed. London: Routledge, 2004.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203543375

Allen Wood provides the best one-volume overview of Marx’s philosophical views as a whole, although his account of Marx’s views on morality have tended to provoke rather than persuade readers. A consistently interesting and illuminating work.

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Karl Marx: Biography, Works, Contributions, Criticisms, and Beliefs

Karl Marx : Although Sociology as a discipline emerged much after Karl Marx’s death, and he had no connection to the subject matter itself, Marx has been assigned the status of a classical thinker in Sociology, and his theories continue to be examined and analyzed voraciously by sociologists and students of sociology. This article provides an insight into the life, some major works, and criticisms of the theories s of one of the most celebrated, debated, and studied figures.

Introduction to Karl Marx :

Personal Life

Educational Background

Marx’s studied at the high school in his hometown Trier, before which Heinrich taught Marx privately. The Trier High School was often put under surveillance by the local government for promoting liberal ideas among its staff and students. Marx was educated in his later years in Law, History, and Philosophy. In 1835, he was admitted to the University of Bonn. Following a series of hostilities, which Marx got engaged in during his time at Bonn, Marx relocated college to the University of Berlin in 1836 to undertake the subjects of Law and Philosophy (along with History). It was here that Marx was introduced to the ideas of German Philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel, and joined the group of radical thinkers called ‘Young Hegelians’. Hegel played one of the most significant roles in influencing Marx’s theoretical system known as ‘Historical Materialism’, which is the foundation for a majority of Marx’s works. Marx earned a doctorate in Philosophy in 1841 from the University of Jena.

Marx’s career in academia was jeopardized as a consequence of the conservative ministry of education in Berlin placing an embargo on Marx for being a radical. However, he found a place as a writer in the liberal newspaper circulated in Cologne, the hotbed of industrial advancement in Prussia, called ‘ Rheinische Zeitung ’, and later became the editor of the same in October 1842. During his career at the newspaper, Marx wrote on a variety of topics such as press freedom, the vices of censorship, poverty and destitution in Berlin, and the government’s appalling treatment of the indigent and the peasants. His excessive and unreserved criticism on these issues invited the disapproval of the authorities, and the newspaper was proscribed. In 1843, he got married to Jenny, and they both moved to Paris later in the year. In Paris, he got acquainted with the works of Henri de Saint-Simon, a French Philosopher whose views set off the formation of Christian Socialism, as well as those of Adam Smith, a political Economist, and David Ricardo. Marx’s friendship with Friedrich Engels, whom he first made acquaintance with during his work at the  Rheinische Zeitung,  also deepened. This marked the beginning of a journey of partnership and bond of friendship between the two which would persist through the entirety of their lifetimes. Marx’s vehement journalism once again attracted the umbrage of the government, and he was forced to change cities. He moved to Brussels, where, along with his friend Engels, he published two of his most paramount works, namely, ‘ The German Ideology ’ and ‘ The Communist Manifesto ’, along with others such as ‘ The Poverty of Philosophy ’ and ‘ The Holy Family ’, published in 1847 and 1845 respectively. Marx also became associated with the League of the Just, which was later renamed to Communist League. During the workers’ protest that ensued during 1848, Marx and Engels went back to Rhineland, where, in Cologne, they co-contributed to the paper ‘ Neue Rheinische Zeitung ’ started in 1849. Put on trial for arousing and supporting revolts and for participating in the vilification of the royal family of Prussia, Marx was ousted from the country, and also had to leave Paris. With his wife and children, he settled in London. Once there, he immersed himself into writing, mainly focusing on economics, and producing such works as ‘Capital’ (also known as ‘ Das Kapital ’). Marx also established and directed the International Working Men’s Association in 1864, the main purpose of which was to abolish the atrocities under capitalism.

Throughout most of his career, Marx had to rely on financial aids from others, among which was his friend, Friedrich Engels, who provided Marx monetary assistance during his years in London. With rapidly declining health, and lack of means to sustain themselves, Jenny and Marx passed away on December 2, 1881, and March 14, 1883, respectively.

Major Influences on Marx’s Ideology :

Apart from the conditions of the society during his lifetime, and the circumstances in which he grew up, Marx’s thinking which was reflected in his writings were largely inspired by the ideas of several people throughout his life. The following people, along with a few others, were the ones who made the most significant impact on Marx:

In addition to these, others such as Immanuel Kant, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Charles Fourier, Charles Darwin, and his friend, Friedrich Engels’s also made a mark on Marx.

Marx’s Contributions to Sociology :

Read: Das Kapital – Summary

Criticism of Marxism ( Karl Marx) :

Karl Popper, one of the most notable philosophers of the 20 th century, proposed the ‘Falsification Principle’ or the ‘Theory of Falsification’ to determine what can be considered ‘science’ and what else can be considered ‘pseudoscience’. According to Popper’s critique of Karl Marx’s theory, it is a pseudoscience because it cannot be proven false. Karl Popper also said that Marx’s theories try to give a prediction of future events without any substantiated proof. Others such as Leszek Kołakowski, a Polish philosopher, contend that in identifying the social facts as they were, Marx fails to recognize certain basic human conditions such as life and death, etc. Other critiques of Marx’s theories include Max Weber, Robert C. Allen, Jean-Paul Sartre, and John Maynard Keynes.

What did Karl Marx believe in simple terms

Next, Marx believed that despite the unequal power and resource division between the private owners and the laborers, the working class is in a constant state of struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marx believed that a time in the future of people will arrive when the working class or the proletariats will have all the power in their hands, i.e., those who actually do the work will also have control over the resources. That brings us to Communism. As proclaimed by Marx, communism will be that ‘ideal’ structure of social order which takes away the power from the bourgeoisie and redistributes it among the working class and common people. Marx also believed that capitalism can be overthrown only when all people of the working class, regardless of their nationalities, come together and revolt against it. This is declared towards the end of ‘The Communist Manifesto’.

Read: Difference Between Socialism and Communism

Practise Question and Answer

“Religion is the opium of masses and an instrument of classes.” Critically analyze.

(1) Promising rewards in the next birth or afterlife.

(3) Through theories like karma, one believes that the oppressor will get divine justice.

(2) caste system in India.

(3) Religion is a means to develop false consciousness, thus prevents the proletariat from recognising the true cause of their sufferings and uniting in a proletariat revolution.

(5) Louis Althuser calls religion as a part of ideological state apparatus.

(6) ‘Divine right to rule’ of the monarchy → in medieval times.

Bildt, C. (2018, May 10). Why Marx was wrong . The Strategist. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/why-marx-was-wrong/

Feuer, L. S., & McLellan, D. T. (2021). Karl Marx. In Encyclopedia Britannica . https://www.britannica.com/biography/

Keynes, J. M. (1963). Essays in persuasion (p. 300). W. W. Norton & Company.

Leopold, D. (2018, August 30). Alienation . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alienation/

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1992). The communist manifesto (D. Mclellan, Ed.). Oxford University Press.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1998). The german ideology : Including theses on feuerbach and introduction to the critique of political economy . Prometheus Books. (Original work published 1932)

Mommsen, W. J. (1977). Max weber as a critic of marxism. Canadian Journal of Sociology , 2 (4), 373. https://doi.org/10.2307/3340296

O’Hara, P. A. (1997). Veblen’s critique of Marx’s philosophical preconceptions of political economy. The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought , 4 (1), 65–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/10427719700000020

Thornton, S. (2021). Karl Popper . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

Wolff, J., & Leopold, D. (2020). Karl Marx . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

A Brief Biography of Karl Marx

The Father of Communism influenced world events

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Karl Marx (May 5, 1818–March 14, 1883), a Prussian political economist, journalist, and activist, and author of the seminal works, "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital," influenced generations of political leaders and socioeconomic thinkers. Also known as the Father of Communism, Marx's ideas gave rise to furious, bloody revolutions, ushered in the toppling of centuries-old governments, and serve as the foundation for political systems that still rule over more than  20 percent of the world's population —or one in five people on the planet. "The Columbia History of the World" called Marx's writings "one of the most remarkable and original syntheses in the history of human intellect." 

Personal Life and Education

Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (present-day Germany) on May 5, 1818, to Heinrich Marx and Henrietta Pressberg. Marx's parents were Jewish, and he came from a long line of rabbis on both sides of his family. However, his father converted to Lutheranism to evade antisemitism prior to Marx's birth.

Marx was educated at home by his father until high school, and in 1835 at the age of 17, enrolled at Bonn University in Germany, where he studied law at his father's request. Marx, however, was much more interested in philosophy and literature.

Following that first year at the university, Marx became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated baroness. They would later marry in 1843. In 1836, Marx enrolled at the University of Berlin, where he soon felt at home when he joined a circle of brilliant and extreme thinkers who were challenging existing institutions and ideas, including religion, philosophy, ethics, and politics. Marx graduated with his doctoral degree in 1841.

Career and Exile

After school, Marx turned to writing and journalism to support himself. In 1842 he became the editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper "Rheinische Zeitung," but the Berlin government banned it from publication the following year. Marx left Germany—never to return—and spent two years in Paris, where he first met his collaborator, Friedrich Engels.

However, chased out of France by those in power who opposed his ideas, Marx moved to Brussels, in 1845, where he founded the German Workers’ Party and was active in the Communist League. There, Marx networked with other leftist intellectuals and activists and—together with Engels—wrote his most famous work, " The Communist Manifesto ." Published in 1848, it contained the famous line: "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains." After being exiled from Belgium, Marx finally settled in London where he lived as a stateless exile for the rest of his life.

Marx worked in journalism and wrote for both German and English language publications. From 1852 to 1862, he was a correspondent for the "New York Daily Tribune," writing a total of 355 articles. He also continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, as well as actively campaigning for socialism.

He spent the rest of his life working on a three-volume tome, "Das Kapital," which saw its first volume published in 1867. In this work, Marx aimed to explain the economic impact of capitalist society, where a small group, which he called the bourgeoisie, owned the means of production and used their power to exploit the proletariat, the working class that actually produced the goods that enriched the capitalist tsars. Engels edited and published the second and third volumes of "Das Kapital" shortly after Marx's death.

Death and Legacy

While Marx remained a relatively unknown figure in his own lifetime, his ideas and the ideology of Marxism began to exert a major influence on socialist movements shortly after his death. He succumbed to cancer on March 14, 1883, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

Marx's theories about society, economics, and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, argue that all society progresses through the dialectic of class struggle. He was critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, which he called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, believing it to be run by the wealthy middle and upper classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism.

Under socialism, he argued that society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called  communism .

Continuing Influence

Whether Marx intended for the proletariat to rise up and foment revolution or whether he felt that the ideals of communism, ruled by an egalitarian proletariat, would simply outlast capitalism, is debated to this day. But, several successful revolutions did occur, propelled by groups that adopted communism—including those in  Russia, 1917-1919 , and China, 1945-1948. Flags and banners depicting Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, together with Marx, were long displayed in the  Soviet Union . The same was true in China, where similar flags showing the leader of that country's revolution,  Mao Zedong , together with Marx were also prominently displayed.

Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the "thinker of the millennium" by people from around the world. The memorial at his grave is always covered by tokens of appreciation from his fans. His tombstone is inscribed with words that echo those from "The Communist Manifesto," which seemingly predicted the influence Marx would have on world politics and economics: "Workers of all lands unite.”

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Biography Online

Karl Marx Biography

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German political philosopher who laid a theoretical framework for Communism – a radical alternative to capitalist society. With his collaborator Frederich Engels, he wrote the best selling “Communist Manifesto” (1848) which sought to ferment Communist revolution around the world. Marx had a powerful influence over the ideological struggle of the twentieth century.

What did Karl Marx believe in?

In essence, Marx believed that Capitalism led to most workers living in poverty whilst the nation’s wealth was owned by just a few very rich capitalists. Marx believed this ever-increasing inequality would inevitably lead to the working class (proletariat) begin a revolution and overthrow the existing class structure and replace it with a Communist system where the means of production were owned by the state. In theory, this Communist system would lead to equality and fairness.

During his lifetime, Marx did not see any successful Marxist revolution and although many of his predictions proved false, it was a powerful ideology that  split the world into two differing ideological camps. It is also a very controversial philosophy as the Communist states of Soviet Union and China ignored democracy and human rights in their efforts to promote a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’

Karl Marx was born 5 May 1818, in Trier in western Germany. His father was a successful lawyer who had converted from Judaism to Christianity in order to help his law career.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

– Karl Marx “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845)

Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the educated daughter of a Prussian baron, on June 19, 1843. Shortly after this, he moved to Paris to escape the censorship of the Prussian government who were increasingly cracking down on left-wing agitators.

Paris in the 1840s was a hotbed of revolutionary activity. Here Marx met many similar revolutionaries such as Frederick Engels – an English radical. These two were to become lifelong friends and supporters; Engels would later become the chief financial support for Marx and his family.

Political writings

In 1844, Engels wrote an influential book The Condition of the Working Class in England – which described the widespread poverty and exploitation of those working in the new urban industries. This helped Marx develop his idea of a proletarian revolution and he wrote his first work in 1844 – “ Communism Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts “. This philosophical work sought to show Communism as a moral force for good to overcome the alienation of labour under capitalism.

Marx also became interested in the development of history and the changes which inevitably passed through society. He termed this idea – historical materialism. Marx increasingly began to believe that a Proletarian (Communist revolution) was not just desirable, but, an inevitable consequence of historical evolution.

This period led to Marx and Engel’s most famous work – A short pamphlet titled ‘ The Communist Manifesto ‘.

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF THE WORLD, UNITE!”

Unlike the majority of Marx’s work, this Manifesto was short, to the point and included fiery, inspirational language, designed to awaken the desire for revolution.

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

The Communist Manifesto , Chapter 1.

After the revolutions which swept Europe in 1848, Marx increasingly found himself under suspicion and scrutiny from French and Belgian authorities. He decided to flee to London, England and continue his work from there.

Marx in London

Another influential event was the Paris Commune uprising of 1871. Though defeated after two months, Marx enthusiastically supported this as being a forerunner of future Communist revolutions.

Marx spent considerable time in the British Library researching political economy. This led to his deepest work – Das Capital – a dense and thorough examination of Capitalist society and economy.

“A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood.Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

Marx, Das Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4, pg.81

Marx also sought to examine all aspects of life from his new Marxist analysis. For example, he sought to show religion and patriotism were merely a tool of Capitalist society to keep the workers pacified whilst they were exploited by capitalists.

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. ” — (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

Following the death of his beloved wife, Jenny, in 1881, Marx’s health deteriorated and he died from Bronchitis and Pleurisy in 1883. He was buried at Highgate cemetery London.

Karl Marx tomb in Highgate Ceremony

What is the Legacy of Karl Marx?

Marx predicted that in a capitalist society the working class would become ever poorer and the middle classes would become squeezed into either rich capitalists or poor workers. In reality, the opposite happened. The working class in western Europe and US saw rising living standards. Ironically, rising living standards and more education made workers more politically aware and this led to the birth of labour movements. However, in the west, Marxist inspired Communist parties generally struggled, with most workers preferring incremental change through the democratic process.

The most successful Communist revolutions were in the Soviet Union and China – two countries with an under-developed industry and limited working class. These revolutions were not so much led by the working class, but middle-class agitators with support from workers, soldiers and peasants. Lenin, the architect of the Soviet revolution was a devotee of Karl Marx and read his writings closely. Therefore, the writings of Marx definitely contributed to the development of the early Soviet model. However, after Lenin’s death, the Soviet Union was steered more by the personality of Stalin than Marxist teachings. Some defenders of Marx argue the Soviet Union was a travesty of Marx’s vision. Others argue that his call for revolution and a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ gave the Communist Party a theoretical justification for using censorship and repression to gain control – making a totalitarian state almost inevitable.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and China’s embrace of capitalism, the influence of Marx and Communism has waned. However, Marxism has left a lasting legacy on economics, politics and even sociology. Even if just as a reference point to criticise, Marxism and the idea of a radical alternative to existing society has a deep-seated imprint on western thought.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Karl Marx”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , Published 1 February 2011. Last updated 11 February 2020.

The Portable Karl Marx – Includes the complete Communist Manifesto and substantial extracts from On the Jewish Question, the German Ideology, Grundrisse, and Capital, a broad representation of his letters, and lesser-known works, especially his long-unavailable, early works at Amazon.com

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Marx-Engels Biography

by Frederick Engels

This short biography is based on Engels’ version written at the end of July 1868 for the German literary newspaper Die Gartenlaube , whose editors decided against using it.

Written : Engels rewrote it around July 28, 1869; First Published : in Die Zukunft , No. 185, August 11, 1869; Translated : by Joan and Trevor Walmsley; Transcribed : for the Internet by Zodiac; Html Markup : by Brian Baggins .

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, where he received a classical education. He studied jurisprudence at Bonn and later in Berlin, where, however, his preoccupation with philosophy soon turned him away from law. In 1841, after spending five years in the “metropolis of intellectuals,” he returned to Bonn intending to habilitate. At that time the first “New Era” was in vogue in Prussia . Frederick William IV had declared his love of a loyal opposition, and attempts were being made in various quarters to organise one. Thus the Rheinische Zeitung was founded at Cologne; with unprecedented daring Marx used it to criticise the deliberations of the Rhine Province Assembly, in articles which attracted great attention. At the end of 1842 he took over the editorship himself and was such a thorn in the side of the censors that they did him the honour of sending a censor [Wilhelm Saint-Paul] from Berlin especially to take care of the Rheinische Zeitung. When this proved of no avail either the paper was made to undergo dual censorship, since, in addition to the usual procedure, every issue was subjected to a second stage of censorship by the office of Cologne’s Regierungspresident [Karl Heinrich von Gerlach] . But nor was this measure of any avail against the “obdurate malevolence” of the Rheinische Zeitung, and at the beginning of 1843 the ministry issued a decree declaring that the Rheinische Zeitung must cease publication at the end of the first quarter. Marx immediately resigned as the shareholders wanted to attempt a settlement, but this also came to nothing and the newspaper ceased publication.

His criticism of the deliberations of the Rhine Province Assembly compelled Marx to study questions of material interest. In pursuing that he found himself confronted with points of view which neither jurisprudence nor philosophy had taken account of. Proceeding from the Hegelian philosophy of law, Marx came to the conclusion that it was not the state, which Hegel had described as the “top of the edifice,” but “civil society,” which Hegel had regarded with disdain, that was the sphere in which a key to the understanding of the process of the historical development of mankind should be looked for. However, the science of civil society is political economy, and this science could not be studied in Germany, it could only be studied thoroughly in England or France.

Therefore, in the summer of 1843, after marrying the daughter of Privy Councillor von Westphalen in Trier (sister of the von Westphalen who later became Prussian Minister of the Interior) Marx moved to Paris, where he devoted himself primarily to studying political economy and the history of the great French Revolution. At the same time he collaborated with Ruge in publishing the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher , of which, however only one issue was to appear. Expelled from France by Guizot in 1845, he went to Brussels and stayed there, pursuing the same studies, until the outbreak of the February revolution. Just how little he agreed with the commonly accepted version of socialism there even in its most erudite-sounding form, was shown in his critique of Proudhon’s major work Philosophie de la misère, which appeared in 1847 in Brussels and Paris under the title of The Poverty of Philosophy . In that work can already be found many essential points of the theory which he has now presented in full detail. The Manifesto of the Communist Party , London, 1848, written before the February revolution and adopted by a workers’ congress in London, is also substantially his work.

Expelled once again, this time by the Belgian government under the influence of the panic caused by the February revolution, Marx returned to Paris at the invitation of the French provisional government. The tidal wave of the revolution pushed all scientific pursuits into the background; what mattered now was to become involved in the movement. After having worked during those first turbulent days against the absurd notions of the agitators, who wanted to organise German workers from France as volunteers to fight for a republic in Germany, Marx went to Cologne with his friends and founded there the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , which appeared until June 1849 and which people on the Rhine still remember well today. The freedom of the press of 1848 was probably nowhere so successfully exploited as it was at that time, in the midst of a Prussian fortress, by that newspaper. After the government had tried in vain to silence the newspaper by persecuting it through the courts – Marx was twice brought before the assizes for an offence against the press laws and for inciting people to refuse to pay their taxes, and was acquitted on both occasions – it had to close at the time of the May revolts of 1849 when Marx was expelled on the pretext that he was no longer a Prussian subject, similar pretexts being used to expel the other editors. Marx had therefore to return to Paris, from where he was once again expelled and from where, in the summer of 1849, [about August 26 1849] he went to his present domicile in London.

In London at that time was assembled the entire fine fleur [flower] of the refugees from all the nations of the continent. Revolutionary committees of every kind were formed, combinations, provisional governments in partibus infidelium, [literally: in parts inhabited by infidels. The words are added to the title of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries; here it means “in exile”] there were quarrels and wrangles of every kind, and the gentlemen concerned no doubt now look back on that period as the most unsuccessful of their lives. Marx remained aloof from all of those intrigues. For a while he continued to produce his Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the form of a monthly review (Hamburg, 1850), later he withdrew into the British Museum and worked through the immense and as yet for the most part unexamined library there for all that it contained on political economy. At the same time he was a regular contributor to the New York Tribune, acting, until the outbreak of the American Civil War, so to speak, as the editor for European politics of this, the leading Anglo-American newspaper.

The coup d’etat of December 2 induced him to write a pamphlet, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , New York, 1852, which is just now being reprinted (Meissner, Hamburg), and will make no small contribution to an understanding of the untenable position into which that same Bonaparte has just got himself. The hero of the coup d’état is presented here as he really is, stripped of the glory with which his momentary success surrounded him. The philistine who considers his Napoleon III to be the greatest man of the century and is unable now to exaplin to himself how this miraculous genius suddenly comes to be making bloomer after bloomer and one political error after the other – that same philistine can consult the aforementioned work of Marx for his edification.

Although during his whole stay in London Marx chose not to thrust himself to the fore, he was forced by Karl Vogt, after the Italian campaign of 1859, to enter into a polemic, which was brought to an end with Marx’s Herr Vogt (London, 1860). At about the same time his study of political economy bore its first fruit: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , Part One, Berlin, 1859. This instalment contains only the theory of money presented from completely new aspects. The continuation was some time in coming, since the author discovered so much new material in the meantime that he considered it necessary to undertake further studies.

At last, in 1867, there appeared in Hamburg: Capital. A Critique of Political Economy , Volume I . This work contains the results of studies to which a whole life was devoted. It is the political economy of the working class, reduced to its scientific formulation. This work is concerned not with rabble-rousing phrasemongering, but with strictly scientific deductions. Whatever one’s attitude to socialism, one will at any rate have to acknowledge that in this work it is presented for the first time in a scientific manner, and that it was precisely Germany that accomplished this. Anyone still wishing to do battle with socialism, will have to deal with Marx, and if he succeeds in that then he really does not need to mention the dei minorum gentium.” [“Gods of a lesser stock;” meaning, celebrities of lesser stature.]

But there is another point of view from which Marx’s book is of interest. It is the first work in which the actual relations existing between capital and labour, in their classical form such as they have reached in England, are described in their entirety and in a clear and graphic fashion. The parliamentary inquiries provided ample material for this, spanning a period of almost forty years and practically unknown even in England, material dealing with the conditions of the workers in almost every branch of industry, women’s and children’s work, night work, etc.; all this is here made available for the first time. Then there is the history of factory legislation in England which, from its modest beginnings with the first acts of 1802, has now reached the point of limiting working hours in nearly all manufacturing or cottage industries to 60 hours per week for women and young people under the age of 18, and to 39 hours per week for children under 13. From this point of view the book is of the greatest interest for every industrialist.

For many years Marx has been the “best-maligned” of the German writers, and no one will deny that he was unflinching in his retaliation and that all the blows he aimed struck home with a vengeance. But polemics, which he “dealt in” so much, was basically only a means of self-defence for him. In the final analysis his real interest lay with his science, which he has studied and reflected on for twenty-five years with unrivalled conscientiousness, a conscientiousness which has prevented him from presenting his findings to the public in a systematic form until they satisfied him as to their form and content, until he was convinced that he had left no book unread, no objection unconsidered, and that he had examined every point from all its aspects. Original thinkers are very rare in this age of epigones; if, however, a man is not only an original thinker but also disposes over learning unequalled in his subject, then he deserves to be doubly acknowledged.

As one would expect, in addition to his studies Marx is busy with the workers’ movement; he is one of the founders of the International Working Men’s Association, which has been the centre of so much attention recently and has already shown in more than one place in Europe that it is a force to be reckoned with. We believe that we are not mistaken in saying that in this, at least as far as the workers’ movement is concerned, epoch-making organisation the German element – thanks precisely to Marx – holds the influential position which is its due.

Marx/Engels Biographical Archive

• World Biography

Karl Marx Biography

Born: May 5, 1818 Trier, Germany (formerly in Rhenish Prussia) Died: March 14, 1883 London, England German philosopher and political leader

The German philosopher, revolutionary economist (one who studies the use of money and other material funds), and leader Karl Marx founded modern "scientific" socialism (a system of society in which no property is held as private). His basic ideas—known as Marxism—form the foundation of Socialist and Communist (an economic and government system characterized by citizens holding all property and goods in common) movements throughout the world.

Karl Heinreich Marx was born in Trier, Rhenish Prussia (present-day Germany), 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 (masters or teachers of Jewish religion). Barred from the practice of law because he was Jewish, Heinrich Marx converted to Lutheranism about 1817. Karl was baptized in the same church in 1824 at the age of six. Karl attended a Lutheran elementary school but later became an atheist (one who does not believe in the existence of God) and a materialist (one who believes that physical matter is all that is real), rejecting both the Christian and Jewish religions. It was he who coined the saying "Religion is the opium [drug that deadens pain, is today illegal, and comes from the poppy flower] of the people," a basic principle in modern communism.

Karl attended the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier for five years, graduating in 1835 at the age of seventeen. The gymnasium's program was the usual classical one—history, mathematics, literature, and languages, particularly Greek and Latin. Karl became very skillful 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 [1564–1616], whose works he knew by heart), although he never lost his heavy German accent when speaking.

Young adult years

Marx's dismayed father took him out of Bonn and had him enter the University of Berlin, then a center of intellectual discussion. In Berlin a circle of brilliant thinkers was challenging existing institutions and ideas, including religion, philosophy, ethics (the study of good and bad involving morals), and politics. Marx joined this group of radical (extreme in opinion) thinkers wholeheartedly. He spent more than four years in Berlin, completing his studies with a doctoral degree in March 1841.

Forced to move on

Marx then turned to writing and journalism to support himself. In 1842 he became editor of the liberal (open to new ideas) Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, but the Berlin government prohibited it from being published the following year. In January 1845 Marx was expelled from France "at the instigation [order] of the Prussian government," as he said. He moved to Brussels, Belgium, where he founded the German Workers' Party and was active in the Communist League. Here he wrote the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (known as the Communist Manifesto ). Expelled (forced out) by the Belgian government, Marx moved back to Cologne, where he became editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in June 1848. Less than a year later, the Prussian government stopped the paper, and Marx himself was exiled (forced to leave). He went to Paris, but in September the French government expelled him again. Marx finally settled in London, England, where he lived as a stateless exile (Britain denied him citizenship and Prussia refused to take him back as a citizen) 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. Journalism, however, paid very poorly; Marx was literally saved from starvation by the financial support of friend and fellow writer, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). In London in 1864 Marx helped to found the International Workingmen's Association (known as the First International), for which he wrote the inaugural (opening) address. Thereafter Marx's political activities were limited mainly to exchanging letters with radicals in Europe and America, offering advice, and helping to shape the socialist and labor movements.

Personal life

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 December 2, 1881, at the age of sixty-seven. For Marx it was a blow from which he never recovered.

The Marxes had seven children, four of whom died in infancy or childhood. He deeply loved his daughters, who, in turn, adored him. Of the three surviving daughters—Jenny, Laura, and Eleanor—two married Frenchmen. Both of Marx's sons-in-law became prominent French socialists and members of Parliament. Eleanor was active as a British labor organizer.

Marx spent most of his working time in the British Museum, doing research both for his newspaper articles and his books. In preparation for Das Kapital, he read every available work in economic and financial theory and practice.

Marx's excessive smoking, wine drinking, and love of heavily spiced foods may have been contributing causes to his illnesses. In the final dozen years of his life, he could no longer do any continuous 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 his grave is marked by a bust (sculpture of a person's head and shoulders) of him.

Marxism achieved its first great triumph in the Russian Revolution (1917–21; when the lower class overthrew three hundred years of czar rule), when its successful leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870–1924), a lifelong follower of Marx, organized the Soviet Union as a proletarian dictatorship (country ruled by the lower class). Lenin based the new government on Marx's philosophy as Lenin interpreted it. Thus, Marx became a world figure and his theories became a subject of universal attention and controversy (open to dispute). Marx wrote hundreds of articles, brochures, and reports, but only five books.

Marx's universal appeal lies in his moral approach to socio-economic problems, in his insights into the relationships between institutions and values, and in his ideas about the salvation (to save from destruction) of mankind. Hence Marx is best understood if one studies not only his economics, but also his theory of history and politics. The central idea in Marx's thought involves two basic notions: that the economic system at any given time determines the current ideas; and that history is an ongoing process keeping up with the economic institutions that change in regular stages.

To Marx, capitalism (an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods) was the last stage of historical development before communism. The lowest social or economic class of a community, when produced by capitalism, is the last historical class. The two are fated to be in conflict—the class struggle, which Marx wrote of in the Communist Manifesto —until the lower class inevitably wins. The proletarian dictatorship, in turn, develops into communism, in which there are no classes and no inequalities. The logical suggestion is that with the final establishment of communism, history comes to a sudden end. This Marxist interpretation has been criticized in the noncommunist world as historically inaccurate, scientifically weak, and logically ridiculous. Nevertheless, Marx's message of an earthly paradise (a classless society) has provided millions with hope and a 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."

For More Information

Manuel, Frank Edward. A Requiem for Karl Marx. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Strathern, Paul. Marx in 90 Minutes. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.

Wheen, Francis. Karl Marx: A Life. New York: Norton, 2000.

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Article abstract: Marx’s ideas concerning modes of economic distribution, social class, and the developmental patterns of history have profoundly influenced theories in philosophical and economic thought and have helped shape the political structure of the modern world.

Karl Marx was born into a Jewish family in the city of Trier in the southern Rhineland area. When the Rhineland was rejoined, after the Napoleonic Wars, to Protestant Prussia in 1814, his father, a public lawyer, had converted to Christianity. In 1830, the young Marx entered the Trier secondary school and pursued the traditional humanities curriculum. In the fall of 1835, he entered the University of Bonn as a law student but left the following year to enroll at the University of Berlin. His studies were concentrated on law, history, and the works of the then-leading philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Marx was graduated in 1841, after writing his doctoral dissertation, and returned to Bonn, where he became involved with his friend Bruno Bauer in left-wing politics and in the study of the materialist philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. In April, 1842, he began writing radical articles for the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish gazette), and he assumed its editorship in Cologne that October. He married in June, 1843, and moved to Paris that October.

In August, 1844, Marx met Friedrich Engels in Paris, and the two began a productive collaboration. Marx’s articles had angered the Prussian government, and in February, 1845, he moved to Brussels. In 1848, the year of revolutions in many European countries, Marx was ordered to leave Brussels; he returned to Paris and then to Cologne. He was again compelled to leave in 1849 and went to London, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

Life’s Work

Marx’s lifelong critique of capitalist economy began in part as an analysis of the then-dominant Hegelian system of philosophical Idealism. Influenced to a degree by Feuerbach’s materialism, Marx rejected Hegel’s metaphysical vision of a Weltgeist , or Absolute Spirit. It was not metaphysical Spirit that governed history but rather material existence that determined consciousness. The ways in which an individual was compelled to seek physical necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing within a society profoundly influenced the manner in which a person viewed himself and others. As Hegel (and others) suggested, the course of history was indeed a dialectical process of conflict and resolution, but for Marx this development was determined to a great extent by economic realities. Whereas Hegel saw dialectical process (thesis/antithesis/synthesis) as one of ideas, for Marx it was one of class struggle. Hence Marx’s position is called dialectical materialism. He stood in staunch opposition to the prior philosophical tradition of German Idealism and thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. German philosophy, he believed, was mired in insubstantial theoretical speculation when concrete and practical thought about the relationship between reality—especially economic and political realities—and consciousness was needed. In general, Marx was a synthetic thinker, and his views represent a mixture of German materialist philosophy such as that of Feuerbach; the French social doctrines of Charles Fourier, Comte de Saint-Simon, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; and British theories of political economy such as those of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

Marx’s philosophical position of a dialectical materialism suggests a comprehensive view of social organization—which is, broadly speaking, a dimension of human consciousness—in all its manifestations. The determinant of all societal forms is its economic base ( Basis ), that is, the means of production and the distribution of its produced wealth. All aspects of human social interaction, what Marx called the superstructure...

(This entire section contains 1998 words.)

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( Überbau ), are influenced and shaped by the economic base and its consequent relationships of power among social classes. The superstructure ultimately involves a society’s educational, legal, artistic, political, philosophical, and scientific systems. The nature of the economic base—above all the power relationships of the classes—tends to be reproduced in an overt or covert fashion in the various dimensions of the societal superstructure. The pedagogical curriculum of the school system, for example, might reproduce or reinforce in some unconscious manner the inequality of the social classes upon which the mode of production is based. Various aspects of the artistic or cultural dimensions of a society (a novel, for example) might also incorporate in symbolic expression the nature of the economic base. Thus Marx’s economic theories provide an account for a wide variety of phenomena.

In capitalist political economy, the individual must sell his physical or intellectual labor, must sell himself as a commodity, in order to survive. Thus, Marx’s early writings, such as Ökonomische und philosophische Manuskripte (1844; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 , 1947), deal with the pivotal concept of alienation ( Entfremdung ) as a central aspect of the worker’s experience in capitalism. Since the worker is reduced to an exploited commodity or object, this is above all a condition of dehumanization ( Entmenschlichung ). The individual is alienated or divorced from his full potential as a human being. Committed to long hours of labor in a factory, the worker—and this means man, woman, and child—has no time to develop other facets of the personality. In a capitalist society, individuals are estranged not only from aspects of their own selves but also from others in that the labor market is a competitive one, and workers must outdo one another in order to survive. In its crudest form, capitalist economy, Marx would assert, is a kind of Darwinian “survival of the fittest,” in which the weak—those who cannot work—must perish.

In his Die deutsche Ideologie (1845-1846; The German Ideology , 1938), Marx discusses earlier forms of social organization, such as tribal or communal groups, in which the estrangement of the individual in industrialist society was not yet a crucial problem. His vision of an ideal socialist state would be one in which the individual might, for example, manufacture shoes in the morning, teach history in the afternoon, and play music in an orchestra in the evening. In other words, a person would be free to utilize or realize all dimensions of the self. This idealized notion of social organization in the writings of the young Marx indicates the utopian influence of romantic thought upon his initial critique of capitalist society.

In 1848, after the Paris revolts of that same year, Marx and Engels published Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei ( The Communist Manifesto , 1850), a booklet that has become the best-known and most influential statement of Marxist ideology. It presents a brief historical sketch of bourgeois society and suggests that capitalism will eventually collapse because of its inherent pattern of cyclical economic crises and because of the worsening situation of the worker class, or the proletariat, in all capitalist nations. The proletariat has become, they argue, more conscious of its situation, and a worker revolution is inevitable. The international communist party presents a revolutionary platform in which the workers are the ruling class in charge of all capital production. Marx and Engels call for a worker revolt to overthrow the “chains” that bind them.

Marx wrote and published Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1859; A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy , 1904), which became a preliminary study for the first volume of his and Engels’ planned multivolume analysis of capitalist political economy, Das Kapital (1867, 1885, 1894; Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , 1886, 1907, 1909, better known as Das Kapital ). Marx actually completed only the first volume; the second and third were edited from his notes by Engels, who was helped on the third by Karl Kautsky. This work is a more technical economic analysis of the capitalist mode of production with the intention of revealing “the economic law of motion” that underlies modern (industrial) society.

It would be beyond the scope of this study to provide a detailed summary of this complex work, but a few words of general explanation may be given. Marx discusses economic issues such as the labor theory of value and commodities, surplus value, capital production and accumulation, and the social relations and class struggles involved in capital production. Capital accumulation, the central goal and justification of the system, is beset by certain internal contradictions, such as periodic episodes of moderate to extreme market inflation and depression and a tendency toward monopoly. These inherent conditions usually have their most deleterious effects upon the wage laborer. Such cycles will eventually lead to economic collapse or revolutionary overthrow by the proletariat. In general, Marx’s analyses were flawed—especially the labor theory of value upon which much of this work is based—and could not account for adaptive changes in the capitalist system.

In December, 1881, Marx’s wife, Jenny, died, and his daughter died the following year. Marx himself, after a life of overwork and neglect of his health, died in 1883.

Karl Marx was a critical social and economic philosopher whose materialist analyses of bourgeois capitalist society initiated a revolution that has had profound effects on the development of human civilization. Despite some of the later ideological, and at times quasi-religious and fanatical, adaptations of his thought, the basic philosophical assumptions of Marx’s approach remain humanistic and optimistic; they are based upon fundamental notions of the European Enlightenment, that is, that human reason can successfully alleviate the problems of life. Alienation is, for example, in Marx’s view (as opposed to modern existential thought) a historical and societal phenomenon that can be overcome through a change in the social-economic order. Marxism has remained a vital intellectual position and therefore possesses much relevance to the modern world.

Subsequent developments of Marxist thought have resulted in Communist Party revolutions in a number of countries such as that led by the ideologue Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) within czarist Russia in 1917 or that of the popular leader Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976) in the Republic of China in 1949. Unfortunately, these revolutions have involved pogroms and mass executions of certain segments of the population, usually elements of the landed bourgeoisie. This was the case under the rule of Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) in Soviet Russia. These socialist governments have become reified, for the most part, at the intermediate stage of a party dictatorship rather than the essentially free state of the people that Marx had ideally envisioned.

Marx’s philosophy has led to fruitful thought in areas other than social and economic thought. The notion that the power relationships of the economic base effect in various ways the manifestations of the societal superstructure has produced an analytical mode called ideological criticism, in which the hidden dimensions of class ideology are revealed in their social expressions. This has been especially productive in the field of literature and the arts. Marxist analyses of literary texts have yielded new insights into the nature of literary production and its relationship to society at large. The Hungarian critic Georg Lukács (1885-1971), for example, wrote many excellent books and essays on the history of European literature, establishing a new model of Marxist interpretation and criticism.

Bibliography

Bottomore, Tom, ed. Karl Marx . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. An excellent collection of essays by prominent scholars on various aspects of Marx’s thought. Contains a selected bibliography.

Henry, Michel. Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality . Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. An important critical work by a French scholar who gives close readings/interpretations of Marx’s key texts.

McLellan, David. Karl Marx: His Life and Thought . New York: Harper & Row, 1973. An excellent critical biography of Marx by a prominent Marxist scholar. Contains a good bibliography.

McLellan, David. Marx Before Marxism . New York: Harper & Row, 1970. An excellent study of Marx’s important early years as a student and the development of his initial ideas. Contains a selected bibliography.

Singer, Peter. Marx . New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. A brief but informative introduction to Marx’s life and major ideas. Contains suggestions for further reading.

Suchting, W. A. Marx: An Introduction . New York: New York University Press, 1983. A good critical biography of Marx presented chronologically and by topic. Contains helpful guide for further reading.

Cite this page as follows:

"Karl Marx - Biography." History of the World: The 19th Century, edited by Frank McGill, Christina J. Moose, and Mark Rehn, eNotes.com, Inc., 1999, 8 Sep. 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/karl-marx#biography-biography-biography-karl-marx>

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