Marx, Karl

Karl Marx (1818–1883), a philosopher, journalist, economist, and revolutionary, was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany. Marx's father, Heinrich, was a respected attorney, owned several vineyards, and was a moderately prosperous member of the middle class. Marx's parents were Jewish, but in 1824, Heinrich converted the family to Protestantism to avoid the [Page 643]social and economic losses that would have followed from Prussian laws that banned Jews from holding public office or practicing in the professions. Supported economically by his father, Marx spent a year at Bonn University as a law student, studying sporadically, drinking heavily, and engaging in various acts of brawling and hell-raising. Heinrich Marx, dismayed at his son's behavior, arranged for Marx's transfer to the more rigorous University of Berlin, where Marx, though reading voraciously, continued his rabble-rousing ways, rarely attending lectures, and incurring many debts.

When Heinrich Marx died in 1838, Marx's mother, with whom Marx did not get along, essentially disowned him by cutting off his allowance and withholding his part of the family estate. From this time on, Marx had little to do with his mother and his seven siblings. Now experiencing economic hardship (a hardship that would last without interruption for the next three decades), Marx also experienced an intellectual crucible through a profound engagement with Hegel's work. Turning from the study of law (and an assured economic future in the profession his father had chosen for him) to the study of philosophy (which held little promise of an economically stable professional future), Marx read all of G. W. F. Hegel's work and became deeply involved with the Young Hegelians, a group that embraced Hegel's dialectical method while radically critiquing Hegel's idealism. Marx eventually finished his dissertation in 1841, but because of an anti-Hegelian purge at the University of Berlin, Marx submitted his dissertation to the University of Jena, receiving his doctorate in absentia.

In 1842, Marx moved to Cologne and became editor of the influential progressive newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, which the Prussian (i.e., monarchist, oppressive, militaristic) government shut down because of Marx's incisive critiques of the monarchy and its bureaucracy. In 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a prominent member of Trier society. Marx moved to Paris in the fall of 1843 and worked for Vorwarts!, a biweekly communist journal. Jenny gave birth to a daughter in May 1844, and it was at this time that Marx and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) became friends. Engels's father was a prosperous German industrialist who owned cotton mills, one of which was in Manchester, which Engels managed. Engels was shocked by the poverty in Manchester and published Condition of the Working Classes in England, which deeply impressed Marx, who learned much from the book. Marx and Engels's friendship and collaboration lasted for the rest of Marx's life. In the summer of 1844, Marx produced a series of writings that comprise the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which were not discovered until 1930 and published in 1932. In this work, Marx began to formulate his ideas on class struggle, proletarian revolution, and the abolition of private productive property. Marx was expelled from Paris in 1844 for subversive journalism, and he and Jenny next moved to Brussels, where Engels also moved at this time.

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