Marx, Karl (1818–1883)

Karl Marx is often named as one of the two greatest intellectual innovators of the 19th century, the other being Charles Darwin. He helped to redefine the fields of sociology, history, economics, and anthropology. Much of what followed in these disciplines is a response to the theories he outlined in his writings. Known as the father of Marxism, a revolutionary socialist movement worldwide, he also strongly influenced and in part defined such topics as social stratification, historical sociology, materialist anthropology, cultural ecology, social history, and social economics, just to name a few areas. For example, sociologists since Marx have tried to disprove, defend, or reform his theories. Few can ignore the writings of either Marx or his followers.

Karl Marx was born in the German Rhineland city of Trier on May 5, 1818. Both his mother and father were Jewish by birth. However his father, who was well read in the humanist writings of the Enlightenment, converted to the Lutheran faith to secure employment opportunities at a time when many occupations were closed to Jews. Marx's mother and the rest of his family converted later. Having been born into a Jewish family and raised as a Protestant in a Catholic city helped mold the character of young Karl.

At age 17, Marx enrolled in law school at the University of Bonn. At Bonn he became engaged to Jenny Von Westphalen, the daughter of a baron who was also a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin. The next year, Marx transferred [Page 813]to the University of Berlin. There he became interested in philosophy. He associated with the Young Hegelian movement, which was a radical humanist movement. Because a university career was closed to all Young Hegelians, Marx took up journalism as editor of the radical journal Rheinische Zeitung. This would eventually result in Marx's exile to Paris.

In Paris, Marx made contact with the French socialists. As a result of pressure brought to bear by the Prussian government, who feared the anti-Prussian underground in France, Marx was labeled a radical and an undesirable foreigner and was forced by the authorities to leave Paris; he moved to Brussels, where he lived for three years. There Marx dedicated his time to an intensive study of history and expanded the materialist conception of history. He developed what later would become known as historical materialism. In 1848, Marx moved back to Paris in support of the revolutions in France and Germany. In 1849, he moved to Britain, where he died in 1883. Marx developed his methodology of historical materialism in the early years, and it served as a model for his later work in political economy. It is important to analyze the evolution of his life from the days when he was influenced by the Young Hegelians until he wrote German Ideology in 1847 as he moved from philosophy to historical sociology.

Karl Marx, the father of modern communism. Marx believed that the downfall of capitalism by revolution and its replacement with a society based on socialism was

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