Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, and political theorist whose writings became the foundation of the body of thought now known as Marxism. He was born in Trier, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, into a family of Jewish heritage that had converted to Lutheranism.

Marx studied law and philosophy at Bonn and Berlin, and received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841 with a dissertation on ancient Greek atomism. After working as a journalist for the Rheinische Zeitung, he was forced into exile, settling first in Paris and Brussels and finally in London from 1849 until his death.

With his lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848), which sets out a theory of class struggle and calls for the organization of the working class. His longer economic study Das Kapital, the first volume of which appeared in 1867, analyzed the workings of capitalism through concepts such as commodity production, surplus value, and the labour theory of value.

Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen had seven children, only three of whom survived to adulthood. He spent much of his later life in poverty, supported in part by Engels, and died in London at the age of 64. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery.

The name Karl is the German form of Charles, from the Old High German karl or charal meaning free man. It became widespread in continental Europe through Charlemagne, who is known in German as Karl der Große.