I.

Introduction

Karl Marx (1818-1883), German political philosopher and revolutionary, the most important of all socialist thinkers and the creator of a system of thought called Marxism. With political economist Friedrich Engels, he founded scientific socialism (now known as communism); for this, Marx is considered one of the most influential thinkers of all time.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818, into a comfortably middle-class family in the city of Trier, Germany. He was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly after contributing his first article to the Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, Marx became editor of the paper. His writings in the Rheinische Zeitung criticizing contemporary political and social conditions embroiled him in controversy with the authorities, and in 1843 Marx was compelled to resign his editorial post, and soon afterward the Rheinische Zeitung was forced to discontinue publication.

Marx then went to Paris. There, as a result of his further studies in philosophy, history, and political science, he adopted communist beliefs. In 1844, when Engels visited him in Paris, the two men found that they had independently arrived at identical views on the nature of revolutionary problems. They began a collaboration to elucidate systematically the theoretical principles of communism and to organize an international working-class movement dedicated to those principles. For information on their collaboration, which continued until Marx’s death, see Engels, Friedrich.