Case Study

Karl Marx
How to Cite
Famous as: Philosopher
Born on: 05 May 1818 Famous 5th May Birthdays
Born in: Brückergasse, Trier
Died on: 14 March 1883
Nationality: Germany
Zodiac Sign: Taurus Famous Taureans
Works & Achievements: The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, On the Jewish Question, Notes on James Mill, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Holy Family, Theses on Feuerbach, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage-Labor and Capital.
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Bottom of Form Karl Marx. 1 Person Does.

Karl Heinrich Marx was a popular German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, and revolutionary socialist. His works have inspired the foundations of several communist regimes in the twentieth century. The theories of Marx based on societies, economics and politics were altogether called as Marxism. He was also responsible for the socio-political theory of Marxism. In addition to that, the growth of modern social science and the socialist political movement was greatly influenced by the Marxist ideas of Karl. His most famous works are The Communist Manifesto and Capital. Most of his works were co-written with his friend Friedrich Engels, who was the fellow German revolutionary socialist.
Karl Marx Childhood & Early Life
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818 at Brückergasse in Trier to a middle-class fairly wealthy family. His father, Hirschel Marx, was the owner of numerous Moselle vineyards, but as he was a Jew, he faced quite a many disadvantages both legally and financially. As a result, his father decided to convert from Judaism to Lutheranism before his son’s birth. He also replaced Heinrich in place of Hirschel. Initially, Marx received education privately and started attending Trier High School in 1830. In 1835, he commenced studying at the University of Bonn. He was eager to study philosophy and literature, but his father forced him to study law. During this time, Marx even suffered from a weak chest which is why he was refrained from military service. During his years at the University, he became a member of the Trier Tavern Club drinking society and also served as its co-president for sometime. Academically, due to his lack of interest in law, his grades were consistently low which finally resulted in him being transferred to the University of Berlin. In the meantime, Marx was greatly influenced by the work of G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher. But this fascination soon turned into disagreement, as Marx got involved with a committee of radical thinkers called as the young Hegelians. Much like Marx, though the group was critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions, they still adopted his dialectical method to criticize the established society, politics and religion. Marx gained interest in writing and in 1937 came out with a short novel titled “Scorpion and Felix”. Soon he left writing fictions, rather focused on learning English and Italian. In 1841, he completed his doctoral thesis called “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature”. The thesis invited several controversies too, specifically to the conservative professors of the University of Berlin. Following the same reason, Marx submitted it to the University of Jena. The university also awarded him PhD on the basis of the same. Career
Marx was extensively interested academics but took journalism. In 1842, he shifted to the city of Cologne and started writing for the radical newspaper “Rheinische Zeitung”. In his writings, he showcased his socialist views on politics. Marx greatly criticized Europe governments, their policies, liberals and other members of the socialist movement as according to him their ideas were ineffective or completely anti-socialist. By the course of time, the newspaper became quite appealing to the Prussian government censors. After the newspaper published an article criticizing the absolute monarchy in Russia, an ally of the Prussian monarchy, the Russian Tsar Nicholas I requested this newspaper to be banned. In addition, Marx had also written an article for the journal of Young Hegelian named “Deutsche Jahrbücher”. In this article, he raised questions against the censorship instructions issued by Prussian King Friedrich William IV. Shortly, this journal was also censored and closed by authorities. Marx, in 1943, published his work “On the Jewish Question” distinguishing between political and human emancipation. In the same year itself, he published “Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right”, which mainly dealt with religion. After the shutting down of the newspaper “Rheinische Zeitung”, Marx started working with a new radical newspaper “the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher” set by a German socialist revolutionary, Arnold Ruge. This newspaper was based in the city of Paris. Therefore Marx moved to the city in October 1843. The newspaper focused on appealing the writers from France and German states but it was greatly taken over by the latter. Only one issue was published of the same which was fairly successful too mainly because of the addition of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria. On August 28, 1844, Marx met Friedrich Engels, a German socialist and became very good friends eventually. Later Marx and Engels wrote criticizing the philosophical ideas of, the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, the work was published in 1845 as “The Holy Family.” in 1844 itself he wrote, “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.” This work explained the Marx’s concept of alienated labour in detailed form. In 1845, Marx wrote “Theses on Feuerbach”. This work of Marx carried great criticism of materialism, idealism and entire critique of philosophy which keeps abstract reality above the physical world. Post the breakdown of the “Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher”, Marx started writing for the uncensored German radical newspaper in Europe named “Vorwärts” which was handled by several activities linked to the revolutionary socialist League. In 1845 itself, this newspaper was shut down on the request from the Prussian king. Also Marx was also thrown out of the France by the interior minister, François Guizot. Marx then moved to Brussels in Belgium but had to pledge that he would not publish anything on the contemporary politics. Marx got shortly associated with other exiled socialists and Engels too shifted to the city. Marx and Engels together visited the leaders of the Chartists, a socialist movement in Britain. In association of Engels, Marx wrote a book titled “The German Ideology”. This work was followed by some other like The Poverty of Philosophy and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty. All these works of Marx an Engels set the establishment of a political pamphlet called as “The Communist Manifesto.” It was initially published on February 21, 1848. Later Marx received ample inheritance from his father of approximately 6000 francs. Believing the records of the Belgian Ministry of Justice, Marx utilized a third of this money to arm revolution minded workers of Belgian. But the accuracy of the allegations invited disputes. Therefore Marx was deported from Belgium. During the same time, the powers ofKing Louis-Philippe in France and Ferdinand Flocon, editor of “La Réforme” and member of the Provisional Government of the French Second Republic, were taken away due to the radical movement. Therefore, Marx was called back to Paris. When Marx reached there, he observed the revolutionary “June Days Uprising” at first hand. In a hope to witness the scattering of the movement to Germany, Marx shifted back to Cologne in 1849. Afterwards on 1st June, he established a newspaper called “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. He financed the same with the money inherited from his father. Marx went on trial on February 7, 1849 as he was accused of a press misdemeanor. On 8th February, he was again charged with incitement to armed rebellion. Both the times, Marx was announced innocent. The newspaper was shortly closed as Marx was asked to leave the country. In August 1849, he decided to move to London. Years in London
Marx dedicated all his time towards two activities namely revolutionary organizing, and an attempt to understand political economy and capitalism. Initially he suffered from poverty. In 1851, he worked as correspondent for the New York Tribune. From the end of 1851 to March 1852, he wrote “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”. In this work, Marx focused to expand the concepts of historical materialism, class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1864, Marx associated himself with the International Workingmen's Association. He also served as a leader of the Association’s General Council in 1864. Marx was mainly involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing. Marx won the contest but in 1872, he supported the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York, which eventually led to the decline of the association. Experiencing the regular failures and irritations of worker’s revolutions and movements, Marx opted to understand capitalism and devoted a considerable time in the reading room of the British Museum to study and reflect on the works of political economists and economic data. By the year 1857, he gathered more than 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property, wage labor, the state, foreign trade and the world market. In 1859, he published his first crucial economic work, “Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”. In the initial years of 1860s, he composed 3 big volumes of “Theories of Surplus Value” which mainly talked about the theoreticians of political economy. This work of Marx was looked as the fourth book of “Capital”. In 1867, Capital’s first volume was published in which he discussed his labor theory and conception of surplus value and exploitation. The next two volumes remained manuscripts in his lifetime but was published after his death by Engels. Personal Life
Karl Marx married to Jenny von Westphalen on 19 June, 1843. The couple had seven children, six of whom are Jenny Caroline, Jenny Laura, Edgar, Henry Edward Guy, Jenny Eveline Frances and Jenny Julia Eleanor. Their last baby died the same day it was born. Death
In the last 15 months of his life, Marx suffered from catarrh which kept him ill. By the course of time he developed bronchitis and pleurisy leading to his death in London on March 14, 1883. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, on March 17, 1883.
KARL MARX TIMELINE
1818 :
Karl Marx was born on May 5.
1830 :
Started attending Trier High School.
1835 :
Enrolled in the University of Bonn to study law.
1841 :
Completed his doctoral thesis called “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature”.
1842 :
Shifted to the city of Cologne.
1843 :
Got married to Jenny von Westphalen; “On the Jewish Question" got published.
1845 :
“The Holy Family” got published.
1849 :
Marx went on trial as he was accused of a press misdemeanor.
1849 :
Moved to London.
1859 :
“Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” got published.
1867 :
First volume of the “Capital” got published.
1881 :
His wife died.
1883 :
Karl Marx died.

| Karl Marx, 1818-1883 | The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Marx, is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Although he was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, economic and political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death in 1883. Until quite recently almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claim to be Marxist. This very success, however, has meant that the original ideas of Marx have often been modified and his meanings adapted to a great variety of political circumstances. In addition, the fact that Marx delayed publication of many of his writings meant that is been only recently that scholars had the opportunity to appreciate Marx's intellectual stature.Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home in Trier on the river Moselle in Germany on May 5, 1818. He came from a long line of rabbis on both sides of his family and his father, a man who knew Voltaire and Lessing by heart, had agreed to baptism as a Protestant so that he would not lose his job as one of the most respected lawyers in Trier. At the age of seventeen, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn. At Bonn he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen , a prominent member of Trier society, and man responsible for interesting Marx in Romantic literature and Saint-Simonian politics. The following year Marx's father sent him to the more serious University of Berlin where he remained four years, at which time he abandoned his romanticism for the Hegelianism which ruled in Berlin at the time.Marx became a member of the Young Hegelian movement. This group, which included the theologians Bruno Bauer and David Friedrich Strauss, produced a radical critique of Christianity and, by implication, the liberal opposition to the Prussian autocracy. Finding a university career closed by the Prussian government, Marx moved into journalism and, in October 1842, became editor, in Cologne, of the influential Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper backed by industrialists. Marx's articles, particularly those on economic questions, forced the Prussian government to close the paper. Marx then emigrated to France.Arriving in Paris at the end of 1843, Marx rapidly made contact with organized groups of émigr?German workers and with various sects of French socialists. He also edited the short-lived Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher which was intended to bridge French socialism and the German radical Hegelians. During his first few months in Paris, Marx became a communist and set down his views in a series of writings known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), which remained unpublished until the 1930s. In the Manuscripts, Marx outlined a humanist conception of communism, influenced by the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach and based on a contrast between the alienated nature of labor under capitalism and a communist society in which human beings freely developed their nature in cooperative production. It was also in Paris that Marx developed his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).Marx was expelled from Paris at the end of 1844 and with Engels, moved to Brussels where he remained for the next three years, visiting England where Engels' family had cotton spinning interests in Manchester. While in Brussels Marx devoted himself to an intensive study of history and elaborated what came to be known as the materialist conception of history. This he developed in a manuscript (published posthumously as The German Ideology), of which the basic thesis was that "the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production." Marx traced the history of the various modes of production and predicted the collapse of the present one -- industrial capitalism -- and its replacement by communism.At the same time Marx was composing The German Ideology, he also wrote a polemic (The Poverty of Philosophy) against the idealistic socialism of P. J. Proudhon (1809-1865). He also joined the Communist League. This was an organization of German émigr?workers with its center in London of which Marx and Engels became the major theoreticians. At a conference of the League in London at the end of 1847 Marx and Engels were commissioned to write a succinct declaration of their position. Scarcely was The Communist Manifesto published than the 1848 wave of revolutions broke out in Europe.Early in 1848 Marx moved back to Paris when a revolution first broke out and onto Germany where he founded, again in Cologne, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The paper supported a radical democratic line against the Prussian autocracy and Marx devoted his main energies to its editorship since the Communist League had been virtually disbanded. Marx's paper was suppressed and he sought refuge in London in May 1849 to begin the "long, sleepless night of exile" that was to last for the rest of his life.Settling in London, Marx was optimistic about the imminence of a new revolutionary outbreak in Europe. He rejoined the Communist League and wrote two lengthy pamphlets on the 1848 revolution in France and its aftermath, The Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He was soon convinced that "a new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis" and then devoted himself to the study of political economy in order to determine the causes and conditions of this crisis.During the first half of the 1850s the Marx family lived in poverty in a three room flat in the Soho quarter of London. Marx and Jenny already had four children and two more were to follow. Of these only three survived. Marx's major source of income at this time was Engels who was trying a steadily increasing income from the family business in Manchester. This was supplemented by weekly articles written as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune.Marx's major work on political economy made slow progress. By 1857 he had produced a gigantic 800 page manuscript on capital, landed property, wage labor, the state, foreign trade and the world market. The Grundrisse (or Outlines) was not published until 1941. In the early 1860s he broke off his work to compose three large volumes, Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It was not until 1867 that Marx was able to publish the first results of his work in volume 1 of Capital, a work which analyzed the capitalist process of production. In Capital, Marx elaborated his version of the labor theory value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation which would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit in the collapse of industrial capitalism. Volumes II and III were finished during the 1860s but Marx worked on the manuscripts for the rest of his life and they were published posthumously by Engels.One reason why Marx was so slow to publish Capital was that he was devoting his time and energy to the First International, to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. He was particularly active in preparing for the annual Congresses of the International and leading the struggle against the anarchist wing led by Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876). Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. On the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, The Civil War in France, an enthusiastic defense of the Commune.During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined and he was incapable of sustained effort that had so characterized his previous work. He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. In Germany, he opposed in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900) and August Bebel (1840-1913) to compromise with state socialism of Lasalle in the interests of a united socialist party. In his correspondence with Vera Zasulich Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir.Marx's health did not improve. He traveled to European spas and even to Algeria in search of recuperation. The deaths of his eldest daughter and his wife clouded the last years of his life. Marx died March 14, 1883 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London. His collaborator and close friend Friedrich Engels delivered the following eulogy three days later:On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.

An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark. Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.

For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.

And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.

His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work. Marx's contribution to our understanding of society has been enormous. His thought is not the comprehensive system evolved by some of his followers under the name of dialectical materialism. The very dialectical nature of his approach meant that it was usually tentative and open-ended. There was also the tension between Marx the political activist and Marx the student of political economy. Many of his expectations about the future course of the revolutionary movement have, so far, failed to materialize. However, his stress on the economic factor in society and his analysis of the class structure in class conflict have had an enormous influence on history, sociology, and study of human culture.| Return to the Lecture || The History Guide | Feedback |copyright ?2000 Steven Kreis
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