Karl Marx

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Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the most important of all socialist thinkers and the creator of a system of thought called Marxism, and the political system called Communism. Collaborating with for which he organized political movements across Europe.

Career

Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a happy, wealthy middle-class home in the Rhineland city of Trier, in Germany. On both sides of his family, he came from a long line of Jewish rabbis; but his father Heinrich Marx (1782-1838) and family converted to Lutheranism in 1824, which helped him maintain his position as an intellectual and highly respected lawyer. At the age of 17, Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn's law faculty and soaked up its cultural romanticism. His fiance Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a prominent member of Trier society, had already interested Marx in romantic literature and in the utopian socialist Saint-Simonian movement.

Intellectual roots

In 1836 he transferred to the University of Berlin, at the time the foremost scholarly center in the world. Marx abandoned his youthful romanticism and came under the influence of the philosophy of the recently deceased G. W. F. Hegel. which dominated German thought. Marx had long conversations with Young Hegelian intellectuals, notably Bruno Bauer, who were engaged in turning the destructive side of Hegel's ostensibly conservative outlook against the German religious, political, and philosophical status quo. After completing his doctoral thesis (which dealt with the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus), Marx at first hoped to obtain teaching post. When Bauer was dismissed for unorthodoxy in 1842, Marx turned to journalism and began writing for the Rheinische Zeitung, an opposition daily backed by liberal Rhenish industrialists. He soon became its editor, but the paper was closed by the authorities in May 1843, following an expose by Marx of the miserable poverty of farm workers in the Moselle vinyards, a piece of work that led him, as his friend Friedrich Engels later said, "from pure politics to economic relationships and so to socialism." In 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen and composed a lengthy manuscript definitely rejecting Hegel's apologia for contemporary German politics. Unemployable in Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Paris.

Paris and Brussels

In Paris Marx discovered a hothouse of innumerable socialist sects. A proposed journal collapsed, and he plunged into a program of exhasutive readfing in politics, history and economics. In 1844 Marx composed a series of treatises known as the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" or "Paris Manuscripts," in which he finally espoused "communism". He began a lifelong friendship and collaboration with Friedrich Engels, whose father was a partner in a cotton firm in the English city of Manchester. Engels supplied Marx with a practical knowledge of the daily workings of capitalism, as well as generous cash subsidies and the one firm intellectual friendship that lasted until death.

On expulsion from Paris in the autumn of 1844, Marx settled (for the next three years) in Brussels, renewing his study of economics. He visited England, with Engels as his guide, and in London met the leaders of the League of the Just, a semiclandestine club of emigre German artisans. In Brussels Marx founded a network of correspondence committees to keep German, French, and English communists and socialists informed about each other's ideas and activities and to introduce some theoretical unity into the movement.

He devoured the works of economists Adam Smith, David Ricardo, the comte de Saint-Simon, and many others. He rejected the individualistic radicalism of Pierre Joseph Proudhon and attacked him in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), an early attempt to systematize his own thought.

By 1847 the League of the Just was conscious of a need for a more firm theoretical foundation. Marx and Engels were approached and proved eager to help. During two long congresses in London, Marx's ideas were accepted in principle by the organization, now renamed the Communist League, and Marx was commissioned to set them down in writing.

Communist Manifesto

The classic "Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engles called for the working classes to rise in rebellion.

Revolution of 1848

Just as soon as the "Communist Manifesto" appeared, the middle classes and intellwectuals of Europe rose in rebellion. The first of the revolutions of 1848, broke out in Paris. Marx rushed back to Paris at the invitation of the liberal provisional government that had replaced the government of King Louis Philippe. By March 1848, the revolution had reached Prussia, and in Berlin King Frederick William IV had been compelled to grant an elected parliament, a free press, and the convening of an assembly to draw up a new constitution. Marx hurried to Cologne (part of Prussia), and resumed his journalistic activities, concentrating his energies on a new paper, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," which under his editorship favored an alliance between the German workers' movement and the more progressive elements of the middle class. By autumn, 1848, the revolution had been defeated in France and in the Austrian Empire. Marx still favored such an alliance and refused to support separate working-class candidates in elections. Not until April 1849, a month before the final collapse of the revolution in Germany, did he change tactics and advocate separate working-class political action. But it was far too late. Marx returned once again to Paris, expecting the revolution to succeed there; it did not and he was expelled in July 1849. Marx returned to London to begin his long exile.

London

The early years in London were characterized by grinding poverty, due quite as much to Marx's inability to manage his finances as to their inadequacy. Three of his six children died. Three of his daughters reached maturity, as did an illegitimate son borne by the Marx family servant, a son whose true parentage remained a secret until after Engels' death. In 1856 a small legacy enabled Marx to move into a more adequate house, but what he conceived to be the necessity of keeping up appearances soon renewed his financial difficulties. Not until 1864 did the death of his mother and a legacy from an old Communist comrade, bring him substantial relief. But as Marx's pecuniary worries receded, his health deteriorated; he was plagued by boils from head to foot. Despite these difficulties, Marx enjoyed a very warm home life. He loved to play with his children, and the week regularly culminated with a Sunday picnic accompanied by singing and recitations from Shakespeare.

Marx rejoined the Communist League and resumed his journalistic activities. But the study of economics had convinced him that "a new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis," an economic crisis.

Quotations

"Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine:
“Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.” Follow your own course, and let people talk – paraphrased from Dante" Karl Marx London, July 25, 1867.
"From the viewpoint of pure economic theory, Karl Marx can be regarded as a minor post-Ricardian". Paul Samuelson, The American Economic Review, March 1962, pp. 12-15

Bibliography

  • Avineri, Shlomo. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (1970) excerpt and text search
  • Cohen, Gerald Allen, and G. A. Cohen. Karl Marx's Theory of History (2000) excerpt and text search
  • McLellan, David. Karl Marx: A Biography (4th ed. 2006)
  • Mehring, Franz. Marx: The Story of His Life (1962) online edition

Primary sources

See also

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