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Karl Marx ( German: [maʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels) and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs ...
- 14 March 1883 (aged 64), London, England
- 19th-century philosophy
- Philosophy, economics, history, politics
- Overview
- Early years
Karl Marx was a German philosopher during the 19th century. He worked primarily in the realm of political philosophy and was a famous advocate for communism. He cowrote The Communist Manifesto and was the author of Das Kapital, which together formed the basis of Marxism.
How did Karl Marx die?
Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883, when he was 64, after succumbing to a bout of bronchitis. Not owning any land when he died, he was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Originally, his headstone was nondescript, but in 1954 the Communist Party of Great Britain etched the stone with “Workers of all lands unite,” the last line of The Communist Manifesto, along with a quote from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (1845).
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What was Karl Marx’s family like?
Karl Marx was one of nine children. When he got older, he married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen. The two had seven children together, four of whom died before reaching adolescence. Because of Marx’s anti-capital core beliefs, his family was impoverished for much of their lives.
Karl Heinrich Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children. His father, Heinrich, a successful lawyer, was a man of the Enlightenment, devoted to Kant and Voltaire, who took part in agitations for a constitution in Prussia. His mother, born Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and were descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl was born, his father—probably because his professional career required it—was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church. Karl was baptized when he was six years old. Although as a youth Karl was influenced less by religion than by the critical, sometimes radical social policies of the Enlightenment, his Jewish background exposed him to prejudice and discrimination that may have led him to question the role of religion in society and contributed to his desire for social change.
Marx was educated from 1830 to 1835 at the high school in Trier. Suspected of harbouring liberal teachers and pupils, the school was under police surveillance. Marx’s writings during this period exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and a longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity. In October 1835 he matriculated at the University of Bonn. The courses he attended were exclusively in the humanities, in such subjects as Greek and Roman mythology and the history of art. He participated in customary student activities, fought a duel, and spent a day in jail for being drunk and disorderly. He presided at the Tavern Club, which was at odds with the more aristocratic student associations, and joined a poets’ club that included some political activists. A politically rebellious student culture was, indeed, part of life at Bonn. Many students had been arrested; some were still being expelled in Marx’s time, particularly as a result of an effort by students to disrupt a session of the Federal Diet at Frankfurt. Marx, however, left Bonn after a year and in October 1836 enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy.
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Marx’s crucial experience at Berlin was his introduction to Hegel’s philosophy, regnant there, and his adherence to the Young Hegelians. At first he felt a repugnance toward Hegel’s doctrines; when Marx fell sick it was partially, as he wrote his father, “from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested.” The Hegelian pressure in the revolutionary student culture was powerful, however, and Marx joined a society called the Doctor Club, whose members were intensely involved in the new literary and philosophical movement. Their chief figure was Bruno Bauer, a young lecturer in theology, who was developing the idea that the Christian Gospels were a record not of history but of human fantasies arising from emotional needs and that Jesus had not been a historical person. Marx enrolled in a course of lectures given by Bauer on the prophet Isaiah. Bauer taught that a new social catastrophe “more tremendous” than that of the advent of Christianity was in the making. The Young Hegelians began moving rapidly toward atheism and also talked vaguely of political action.
The Prussian government, fearful of the subversion latent in the Young Hegelians, soon undertook to drive them from the universities. Bauer was dismissed from his post in 1839. Marx’s “most intimate friend” of this period, Adolph Rutenberg, an older journalist who had served a prison sentence for his political radicalism, pressed for a deeper social involvement. By 1841 the Young Hegelians had become left republicans. Marx’s studies, meanwhile, were lagging. Urged by his friends, he submitted a doctoral dissertation to the university at Jena, which was known to be lax in its academic requirements, and received his degree in April 1841. His thesis analyzed in a Hegelian fashion the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. More distinctively, it sounded a note of Promethean defiance:
Nov 9, 2009 · Learn about the life and work of Karl Marx, the German philosopher and economist who co-authored the Communist Manifesto and wrote Capital, a critique of capitalism. Explore his early years, education, revolutionary activities, and legacy in European history.
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Aug 26, 2003 · Karl Marx. First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision Mon Dec 21, 2020. Karl Marx (1818–1883) is often treated as a revolutionary, an activist rather than a philosopher, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is certainly hard to find many thinkers who can be said to have had ...
5 days ago · Marxism is a comprehensive and influential theory of society, history, and economy, developed by Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels in the 19th century. Learn about the origins, principles, and impact of Marxism, as well as its relation to class struggle, capitalism, and revolution.
- Where did Marxism come from?Marxism originated in the thought of the German radical philosopher and economist Karl Marx, with important contributions from his friend and colla...
- Why is Marxism important?In the mid-19th century, Marxism helped to consolidate, inspire, and radicalize elements of the labour and socialist movements in western Europe, a...
- How is Marxism different from other forms of socialism?Under socialism, the means of production are owned or controlled by the state for the benefit of all, an arrangement that is compatible with democr...
- How does Marxism differ from Leninism?Marxism predicted a spontaneous revolution by the proletariat, but Leninism insisted on the need for leadership by a vanguard party of professional...
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Aug 8, 2023 · Learn about the life and legacy of Karl Marx, the German philosopher and revolutionary socialist who published 'The Communist Manifesto' and 'Das Kapital,' anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism. Explore his early years, education, political activities, publications, and death.
Karl Marx, (born May 5, 1818, Trier, Rhine province, Prussia [Ger.]—died March 14, 1883, London, Eng.), German political philosopher, economic theorist, and revolutionary. He studied humanities at the University of Bonn (1835) and law and philosophy at the University of Berlin (1836–41), where he was exposed to the works of G.W.F. Hegel.
