Marx short biography
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 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 In Berlin Marx became the editor of the short-lived () 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 , 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 at the age of This was likely a professional concession in response to an 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 , after her father died. Marx was an average student. He was educated at home until he was 12 and spent five years, from to , 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 In October of , 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 philosoph German-born philosopher (–) "Marx" redirects here. For other uses, see Marx (disambiguation) and Karl Marx (disambiguation). Karl Marx (German:[kaʁlmaʁks]; 5 May – 14 March ) was a German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume Das Kapital (–), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence on modern intellectual, political and economic history. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written ) and the Grundrisse (written –). While in Paris in , Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, who became his closest friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in , they were active in the Communist League, and in they wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte () and Das Kapital. From , Marx was involved in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he fought the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Marx's critiques of history, s Marx, Karl, was born on May 5, (New Style), in the city of Trier (Rhenish Prussia). His father was a lawyer, a Jew, who in adopted Protestantism. The family was well-to-do, cultured, but not revolutionary. After graduating from a Gymnasium in Trier, Marx entered the university, first at Bonn and later in Berlin, where he read law, majoring in history and philosophy. He concluded his university course in , submitting a doctoral thesis on the philosophy of Epicurus. At the time Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his views. In Berlin, he belonged to the circle of &#;Left Hegelians&#; (Bruno Bauer and others) who sought to draw atheistic and revolutionary conclusion from Hegel&#;s philosophy. After graduating, Marx moved to Bonn, hoping to become a professor. However, the reactionary policy of the government, which deprived Ludwig Feuerbach of his chair in , refused to allow him to return to the university in , and in forbade young Professor Bruno Bauer to lecture at Bonn, made Marx abandon the idea of an academic career. Left Hegelian views were making rapid headway in Germany at the time. Feuerbach began to criticize theology, particularly after , and turn to materialism, which in gained ascendancy in his philosophy (The Essence of Christianity). The year saw the appearance of his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. &#;One must oneself have experienced the liberating effect&#; of these books, Engels subsequently wrote of these works of Feuerbach. &#;We [i.e., the Left Hegelians, including Marx] all became at once Feuerbachians.&#; At that time, some radical bourgeois in the Rhineland, who were in touch with the Left Hegelians, founded, in Cologne, an opposition paper called Rheinische Zeitung (The first issue appeared on January 1, ). Marx and Bruno Bauer were invited to be the chief contributors, and in October Marx be Karl Marx
Who Was Karl Marx?
Early Life
Education
Karl Marx
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Karl Marx
A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism
Marx, Karl, was born