Marxism

Life and Works of Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Prussia. Educated in the University of Bonn, Friedrich Wilhelm University, and the University of Jena, Marx officially studied law yet retained an interest in several other disciplines including philosophy, economics, and politics. As a student, Marx was heavily influenced by the classical works of Aristotle, Democritus, Plato, Pythagoras, and Thales. In addition to more modern works by Erasmus, Kant, Ricardo, and Machiavelli, Marx was especially concerned with the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and his own contemporary Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (1804–1872).

It was Hegel's philosophy of history and his notion of advancing humanity through contradictory ideas—termed dialectics—that first attracted Marx. However, Hegel had already died by the time Marx began to study his work, and hence, Marx was exposed to the ideas of his peers who had studied under Hegel, chiefly Feuerbach. Feuerbach advocated putting Hegel's ideas into practice, something Marx would later use to fortify his notion of the need to interact with material items in nature rather than concentrating on the ideational concepts that Hegel had proposed.

In late November of 1843, Karl Marx met Friedrich Engels, a young and ambitious advocate for laborers’ role in achieving justice. Engels and Marx soon developed a friendship that lasted throughout much of their adult lives. Engels went on to assist Marx financially and support his literary endeavors as a coauthor in much of his work. Given the importance of his affiliation with Marx and his contributions to his career as a social philosopher, Friedrich Engels is regarded as a central figure in the development of Marxism.

Apart from secondary works that grew out of mid-20th-century reinterpretations of Karl Marx's works, his original writings remain the foundation on which much of Marxism is based today. Some of the more influential pieces composed by Marx and Engels include Thesen über Feuerbach (Theses on Feuerbach) in 1845, Die heilige Familie, oder, Kritik der kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer und Consorten (The Holy Family) in 1845, Die deutsche ideologie (The German Ideology) in 1846, Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party) in 1848, and the first volume of Das Kapital: Kritik der polistschen Ökonomie “Das Kapital” (Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production) in 1867.

...