ABSTRACT
Karl Marx was a German political philosopher. He was born in Trier, Germany, to liberal Jewish parents who had converted to Protestantism in order to advance the law career of his father. In 1836, after a year at the University of Bonn, Marx entered the University of Berlin, where he concentrated on philosophy. Marx moved to Brussels, supported financially by Friedrich Engels. They both attended the Congress of the Communist League in London in 1847. It was that Marx asserted his views about how to bring about a communist revolution. Marx’s ideas—disseminated in part through various interpretations of Marxism—exerted a tremendous impact on twentieth-century politics as well as on critical theory, literary theory, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and the arts. Marx’s thought forwards a progressive, dialectical overcoming of capitalist modes of production that is informed by the struggles and inequalities of the past. It is only through the dialectic that humanity can free itself from alienation and its attendant ideology.
