Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born May 5^th 1818 in Trier and lived until the age of 64 dying on March 14^th 1883. Originally of Jewish ancestry his father converted to Lutheranism in order to avoid the economic and political disadvantages associated with the faith. 

After schooling Marx attended Bonn University to study law. Yet he was not serious about his studies; he socialised often and consequently ran up large debts. In response to the downward spiral his son had taken, Hirschel Marx sent him to Berlin University. Here he would meet Bruno Bauer whose outspoken atheism and radical political opinions would influence and inspire Marx. Marx studied hard and hoped to become a lecturer at the university after his father’s death. 

This was not possible and thus began his foray into journalism. His radical writings meant few were willing to publish his work. Marx moved to the city of Cologne and secured a job as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842. This gave him a platform to push his more socialist views which resulted unsurprisingly in the closure and banning of the radical newspaper.

Moving to France in 1843 to study Socialism he met Fredrick Engels and they formed a partnership that was mutually beneficial to both. Marx had the ability to understand difficult economic and philosophical concepts Engels had the ability to write for a mass audience. Thus on February 21^st 1848 the ‘The Communist Manifesto’ was published, co-authored by Engels. This manuscript was a result of Marx’s forays into philosophy in university as well as his continued study of economies and religion in society. Marx was an empiricist, he studied documents incessantly basing his philosophy on fact rather than what one might call mere speculation.

Marx was a student of Hegel yet was not a purist and he tried to shape his own philosophy in a way that blended Hegelian principles with scientific empiricism. 

The publishing of the Communist Manifesto resulted in Marx being expelled from Belgium where he had originally fled to after the closure of his newspaper. He moved to England and worked on Das Kapital, surviving on donations from Engels before being able to support himself with work for the New York Daily Tribute and the New American Cyclopaedia in the USA and was able to move from absolute poverty with the inheritance of £120 from his wife’s mother. 

From then on he continued work on the second volume of Das Kapital which was published posthumously in 1885, 2 years after Marx’s death.