Karl Marx Biography

Journalist, Historian, Economist, Philosopher (1818–1883)

QUICK FACTS

NAME
Karl Marx

OCCUPATION
Journalist, Historian, Economist, Philosopher

BIRTH DATE
May 5, 1818

DEATH DATE
March 14, 1883

EDUCATION
University of Berlin, University of Bonn

PLACE OF BIRTH
Trier, Germany

PLACE OF DEATH
London, England

FULL NAME
Karl Heinrich Marx

German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx published The Communist
Manifesto and Das Kapital, anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism.
Synopsis
Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx began exploring sociopolitical theories at
university among the Young Hegelians. He became a journalist, and his socialist writings
would get him expelled from Germany and France. In 1848, he published The Communist
Manifesto with Friedrich Engels and was exiled to London, where he wrote the first volume
of Das Kapital and lived the remainder of his life.
Early Life
Karl Heinrich Marx was one of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx in Trier,
Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer who revered Kant and Voltaire, and was a
passionate activist for Prussian reform. Although both parents were Jewish with rabbinical
ancestry, Karl’s father converted to Christianity in 1816 at the age of 35.
This was likely a professional concession in response to an 1815 law banning Jews from
high society. He was baptized a Lutheran, rather than a Catholic, which was the
predominant faith in Trier, because he “equated Protestantism with intellectual freedom.”
When he was 6, Karl was baptized along with the other children, but his mother waited
until 1825, after her father died.
Marx was an average student. He was educated at home until he was 12 and spent five
years, from 1830 to 1835, at the Jesuit high school in Trier, at that time known as the
Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium. The school’s principal, a friend of Marx’s father, was a
liberal and a Kantian and was respected by the people of Rhineland but suspect to
authorities. The school was under surveillance and was raided in 1832.

Education
In October of 1835, Marx began studying at the University of Bonn. It had a lively and
rebellious culture, and Marx enthusiastically took part in student life. In his two semesters
there, he was imprisoned for drunkenness and disturbing the peace, incurred debts and
participated in a duel. At the end of the year, Marx’s father insisted he enroll in the more
serious University of Berlin.
In Berlin, he studied law and philosophy and was introduced to the philosophy of G.W.F.
Hegel, who had been a professor at Berlin until his death in 1831. Marx was not initially
enamored with Hegel, but he soon became involved with the Young Hegelians, a radical
group of students including Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach, who criticized the
political and religious establishments of the day.
In 1836, as he was becoming more politically zealous, Marx was secretly engaged to
Jenny von Westphalen, a sought-after woman from a respected family in Trier who was
four years his senior. This, along with his increasing radicalism, caused his father angst.
In a series of letters, Marx’s father expressed concerns about what he saw as his son’s
“demons,” and admonished him for not taking the responsibilities of marriage seriously
enough, particularly when his wife-to-be came from a higher class.
Marx did not settle down. He received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841,
but his radical politics prevented him from procuring a teaching position. He began to
work as a journalist, and in 1842, he became the editor of Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal
newspaper in Cologne. Just one year later, the government ordered the newspaper’s
suppression, effective April 1, 1843. Marx resigned on March 18th. Three months later,
in June, he finally married Jenny von Westphalen, and in October, they moved to Paris.
Paris
Paris was the political heart of Europe in 1843. There, along with Arnold Ruge, Marx
founded a political journal titled Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French
Annals). Only a single issue was published before philosophical differences between
Marx and Ruge resulted in its demise, but in August of 1844, the journal brought Marx
together with a contributor, Friedrich Engels, who would become his collaborator and
lifelong friend. Together, the two began writing a criticism of the philosophy of Bruno
Bauer, a Young Hegelian and former friend of Marx’s. The result of Marx and Engels’s
first collaboration was published in 1845 as The Holy Family.
Later that year, Marx moved to Belgium after being expelled from France while writing for
another radical newspaper, Vorwärts!, which had strong ties to an organization that would
later become the Communist League.

Brussels
In Brussels, Marx was introduced to socialism by Moses Hess, and finally broke off from
the philosophy of the Young Hegelians completely. While there, he wrote The German
Ideology, in which he first developed his theory on historical materialism. Marx couldn’t
find a willing publisher, however, and The German Ideology -- along with Theses on
Feuerbach, which was also written during this time -- were not published until after his
death.
At the beginning of 1846, Marx founded a Communist Correspondence Committee in an
attempt to link socialists from around Europe. Inspired by his ideas, socialists in England
held a conference and formed the Communist League, and in 1847 at a Central
Committee meeting in London, the organization asked Marx and Engels to write Manifest
der Kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party).
The Communist Manifesto, as this work is commonly known, was published in 1848, and
shortly after, in 1849, Marx was expelled from Belgium. He went to France, anticipating a
socialist revolution, but was deported from there as well. Prussia refused to renaturalize
him, so Marx moved to London. Although Britain denied him citizenship, he remained in
London until his death.

London
In London, Marx helped found the German Workers’ Educational Society, as well as a
new headquarters for the Communist League. He continued to work as a journalist,
including a 10-year stint as a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune from 1852 to
1862, but he never earned a living wage and was largely supported by Engels.
Marx became increasingly focused on capitalism and economic theory, and in 1867, he
published the first volume of Das Kapital. The rest of his life was spent writing and revising
manuscripts for additional volumes, which he did not complete. The remaining two
volumes were assembled and published posthumously by Engels.

Death
Marx died of pleurisy in London on March 14, 1883. While his original grave had only a
nondescript stone, the Communist Party of Great Britain erected a large tombstone,
including a bust of Marx, in 1954. The stone is etched with the last line of The Communist
Manifesto (“Workers of all lands unite”), as well as a quote from the Theses on Feuerbach.
Source: B. (Ed.). (2017, July 10). Karl Marx Biography. Retrieved October 7, 2018, from
https://www.biography.com/people/karl-marx-9401219

PHILOSOPHY
To understand Marxism it’s imperative to understand the time and era in which Karl Marx
was born. He was born in 1818, it was the beginning of the world as we see it today.
French revolution had occurred 30 years back and cries of 'Liberty' 'Equality' and
'Freedom' was still fresh. It was also the time of Industrial Revolution and capitalism had
just replaced feudalism. Marx was influenced by the idea of French Revolution. His growth
was marked by rapid industrialization and capitalism had become dominant economic
system in Europe. He also saw the horrific condition in which workers lived. Marx saw
them toiling for more than 12 hours a day but still managing to earn just enough to sustain
themselves. He observed that capitalism had benefited only few section of society and
came to conclusion that though French revolution had overthrown feudalism but
capitalism had not been able to fulfill the promise of equality and freedom. He saw society
being divided into haves and haves not. It was master and slaves (slavery system) after
that lord and serf (feudalism) and now bourgeoisie and proletariat. Because of his radical
idea he was thrown from Germany and subsequently from many countries until he got
asylum in England. He worked as reporter of New York Tribune and covered American
Civil War publishing many articles. He immersed himself in studying all the important
economic and political philosophers before him like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and
James Mill etc. Marxism emphasized on one thing which his predecessors missed i.e.
LABOUR.
Now coming to Marxism which is fundamentally based on principles of class struggle,
historical materialism, dialectical materialism, alienation and theory of surplus value.
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
It is a scientific method developed by Marx and Engel for interpreting history.
I will try to explain it in simplest way as I have understood it. Dialectic means method of
argument to solve disagreement. In other words method employed to discover truth by
exposing contradictions, through a clash of opposite ideas. Hegel put forward Dialectical
triad - thesis (argument), antithesis (counter argument) and synthesis .He said that when
thesis and antithesis collide we get synthesis which has truth from both thesis and
antithesis. He said growth takes place from contradiction and collision of thesis and
antithesis. Synthesis which we get again becomes thesis which again have antithesis and
the cycle goes on until we reach perfection. Because at perfection there will be no
antithesis and according to Marx Communism is that state of perfection. Materialism is
nothing but believing that matter is the reality and not the idea. According to materialism
it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but, on the contrary, it
is their social existence that determines their consciousness. Hegel supported Dialectical
Idealism because for him idea was at the base for science, economy polity etc. but Marx
supported dialectical materialism because for him material or economic force was the
base of idea,science,polity etc.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
It is the economic interpretation of world history by applying the Marxian methodology of
dialectical materialism. According to this interpretation of history (which is purely
economic or materialistic) there are four stages- primitive communism, the slavery
system, feudalism and capitalism.
1. Primitive communism was the stage where everyone owned means of production
(bows.stone,arrows etc) and there was no private ownership of tithe produce (meat, fruits)
etc. was for self-consumption and there was no surplus production to earn profit. As there
was no surplus there was no private property, class division (haves and haves not), class
struggle and exploitation.
As the technology grew so does the productivity. With surplus production came private
ownership of property of wealth, class divide, exploitation and class struggle. Now the
produce was not merely for self-consumption but for earning profit. Marx defined
exploitation as deprivation of benefits of the surplus to working class. In slavery system
the produce of the slave becomes property of master and in return slave get just enough
to sustain themselves. The surplus (extra produce left after consumption) which he
produced goes to master and he decides what to do with it not the labour. Same in the
case of feudalism where serf had to work three days in his land for sustaining himself and
for his consumption. But other three days he has to work on the lord's land and everything
serf produced in those three days became property of lord. Again serf has no right over
surplus he produced on those three days.
THEORY OF SURPLUS VALUE
Marx believed worker produces more than what it is required for his consumption and the
surplus produced by him should belong to him and he should decide what to do with it
and distribute it. For example soldiers, artisans, children don’t produce in a society. Marx
said that distribution of surplus to that section of society should be done by workers. We
have seen how surplus was denied to workers in feudalism, slave system and now we
will see the case of capitalism. In capitalism labor is a commodity which is sold in return
of wage. So value of commodity is determined by amount of labor put in it. If a wage is
paid in proportion to the amount of value created by a laborer, then there is no
exploitation, but this is not the case in capitalism. For example a worker produces value
of $250 in a month but gets wage of $120 so the surplus $130 goes to owner which he
invests as he sees fit and worker has no say. With the growth of capitalism and the rise
in competition, the wages of the workers continue to fall and reach the stage of
subsistence level. Subsistence wage is the minimum possible wage; beyond this the
wage cannot be reduced. It is the minimum possible wage for the survival and
perpetuation of the labor force. Thus, cut throat competition in capitalism leads to
deterioration of the working class (proletariat). This intensifies class struggle and
eventually leads to revolution.

CLASS STRUGGLE
According to Marx all historical ages (except primitive communism) have been
characterizes by antagonism and struggle between haves and have not. This is due to
exploitation of property less class by property owning class .Between masters and slave
in age of slavery, lord and serf in feudalism and bourgeoisie and proletariat in Capitalism.
He said that the masters, the feudal lords and the bourgeois are the owners of the means
of production. However, it is the slaves, the peasants and the proletariat, who carry out
production, but their produce is taken away by their exploiters and in return, they are given
just enough for their survival. By virtue of the ownership of the means of production the
property owning class exploits the property less class.And the conflict will only cease by
annihilation of property owning class.He predicted that revolution by proletariat will be last
in human history where workers will take ownership of means of production.In dictatorship
of proletariat the majority (proletariat) will use the coercive power against minority
(bourgeoisie).Proletariat will use the power of state,army,police which earlier has been
used by bourgeoisie against them. In the dictatorship of proletariat socialist state will
change to communism. Socialism which is transitory will pave way for communism which
is perfect and stable.As Communism is perfect stage the dialectical process will come to
an end (that whole cycle of thesis , antithesis and synthesis). A perfect,rational social
system will be established, free from antagonisms and contradictions. There will be no
class contradictions and so, no class struggle. Infact communism will be a classless,
stateless, private propertyless and exploitationless society.

THEORY OF ALIENATION
Man is a unique creature which work and by work I mean it uses its brain and muscle to
convert natural product to a thing which is useful and satisfies him.For example converting
cotton to shirts or tree to chairs , table etc.Marx proposed his theory of alienation in which
he tell the different levels in which a man is alienated due to Capitalism.Firstly a man is
alienated from his product and work process because he does not decide what to produce
and how to produce. Man is alienated from nature because his work does not give
satisfaction as a creative worker.His product will not be for his consumption but will act
as a means to bring profit for some.Also his working method is mechanised and working
conditions appalling .Man is alienated from man due to cut throat competition ingrained
in Capitalism.There is class division,exploitation and antagonism.Lastly man is alienated
from himself because Capitalism destroys creativity and taste for art ,literature. The
capitalist system subordinates all human faculties and qualities to the conditions created
by the private ownership of capital and property.The capitalist himself, no less than the
worker, becomes a slave of the tyrannical rule of money.