ABSTRACT
Karl Marx (1818–1883) lived the life of an independent intellectual and political activist. After his studies, he worked as a journalist before leaving his native Germany in 1843, initially for Paris. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. The February Revolution was a sudden attack, a taking of the old society by surprise, and the people proclaimed this unhoped for stroke as a world-historic deed, opening the new epoch. The French bourgeoisie offered resistance to the domination of the working proletariat; it has brought the lumpenproletariat to domination, with the chief of the Society of December 10 at the head. The cohesive force of civilised society is the state, which in all typical periods is exclusively the state of the ruling class, and in all cases remains essentially a machine for keeping down the oppressed, exploited class.
