ABSTRACT
Life. Karl Marx (1818–1883) was the son of an affluent German lawyer of Jewish descent. A student of classical Greek materialism, he wrote his doctoral thesis on Democritus and Epicurus,but he was greatly influenced by the left-wing Hegelianism of his day. He became a journalist for the liberal Rheinische Zeitung. In 1843, after the newspaper was suppressed by the Prussian government, Marx went to Paris,where he came into contact with the French socialists. In France, he met Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), with whom he developed a lifelong friendship and a close collaboration. Through Engels, Marx gained insight into British economic theory and into the economic and social conditions in Britain. (At the time, Engels was the manager of a factory in Manchester.) When Marx was deported from France because of his political activity, he moved to Brussels. Marx and Engels developed a programme of action and published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, in connection with the founding of the Communist League. During the revolution of 1848, Marx went back to the Rhineland,but when the revolution was suppressed, Marx fled to London, where he spent the rest of his life. The International Working Men's Association (also known as the First International) was formed in 1864, and Marx was one of its driving forces. This organization was to represent the proletariat in all countries. After the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, the First International was dissolved. From then on, Marx concentrated on his economic analysis and was no longer actively involved in politics. Among his best-known works are Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844–5), The German Ideology (1845–6), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (1867).
