Philosophy

Karl Marx

1818–1883 · German (Prussian; later stateless in London)

Young Hegelians; historical materialism; socialism

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist and revolutionary whose analysis of capitalism, class and history became one of the most influential bodies of thought of the modern era. With Friedrich Engels he developed historical materialism and the critique of political economy; his ideas inspired socialist and communist movements and remain widely debated, with admirers and critics disputing both his theories and the regimes that claimed his legacy.

How to spot them

▸The Communist Manifesto with Engels; Das Kapital; "Workers of the world, unite!"
▸Class struggle, bourgeoisie and proletariat, surplus value, alienation, base and superstructure
▸Religion as "the opium of the people"
▸Trier; exile in London; the British Museum Reading Room; Highgate Cemetery

Key works

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844)

Early "Paris Manuscripts" on the alienation of labour under capitalism (first published 1932)

Theses on Feuerbach (1845)

Eleven brief notes criticising Feuerbach's materialism, ending "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it" (published by Engels 1888)

The German Ideology (with Engels) (1845–1846)

First sustained statement of historical materialism, against the Young Hegelians (first published in full 1932)

The Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, with Engels) (1848)

Pamphlet for the Communist League: history as class struggle, the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie, and the coming rule of the proletariat

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Class analysis of Louis-Napoléon's 1851 coup; notes history repeats itself "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"

Das Kapital (Capital: Critique of Political Economy) (1867)

Analysis of capitalist production, commodities, labour-power and surplus value; volume I 1867, volumes II (1885) and III (1894) edited by Engels

Key ideas

Historical materialism: the economic base (forces and relations of production) shapes the legal, political and ideological superstructure, and history develops through changes in modes of production
Class struggle: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"; under capitalism the main classes are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
Alienation: under capitalism workers are estranged from the product of their labour, the activity of labour, their human essence and other people
Surplus value: profit arises because workers are paid the value of their labour-power but produce more value than that — Marx's development of the labour theory of value of Smith and Ricardo
Ideology: the ruling ideas of each age are the ideas of its ruling class
Predicted capitalism's crises would lead to its replacement by socialism and ultimately a classless communist society, distributing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

Quick-fire facts

•Born in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland; died in London and buried in Highgate Cemetery
•His doctoral thesis (Jena, 1841) compared the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus
•Edited the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne before its suppression in 1843
•Lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels, a Manchester textile manufacturer's son, supported him financially
•Married Jenny von Westphalen; worked for years in the British Museum Reading Room
•Wrote for the New York Daily Tribune as its European correspondent
•"Religion is ... the opium of the people" comes from his introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843–44)
•Said he found Hegel's dialectic "standing on its head" and set it the right way up (afterword to Capital, 1873)

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Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Karl Marx
Anthony Kenny — A New History of Western Philosophy