Karl Marx Biography

Karl Marx was a philosopher, economist, historian and revolutionary. Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Prussia (today Germany). Marx is considered the most influential philosopher of modern history, founder of scientific socialism, defender of the cause and international unity of the workers, permanent agitator of the revolution and manager of ideas that managed to move the world political and economic order.

Karl Marx was born into a Hebrew family, son of the prestigious lawyer Hirschel Marx and Henrietta Pressburg. However, his family in 1824 decided to adopt the Protestant faith to avoid the anti-Semitic wave unleashed in Prussia, established by the new king, under whose sovereignty they gave the lands of the North Rhine after the defeat of Napoleon.

Marx made his secondary studies at the Lyceum of Trier, the Jesuit gymnasium where he achieved excellent qualifications, with the exception of religion. In October 1835, he enrolled at the University of Bonn to study humanities. His life in college was particularly hectic and excessive: he belonged to a group of poets, participated in politics and was taken to jail for disorderly conduct, because of incidents generated in a state of inebriation.

In 1836, Karl Marx began his law career at the University of Berlin. Before the summer of the same year, he undertook a secret engagement, despite the opposition of both families, with a childhood friend, Jenny von Westphalen, beautiful, romantic, and Baroness, a descendant by mother line of the old Scottish nobility, dukes of Argyll. In this union, there was a clear social difference, which is why his engagement was reserved for some time.

When Marx arrived in Berlin, he felt a deep antipathy for the philosophical influence of Hegel (German idealism). However, as he recognized, he lacked a solid philosophical formation in property, which motivated him to study. It is worth considering that Marx had the obligation to study laws, not philosophy which he called “the enemy.” However, Karl recognized that “the enemy fascinated him”.

His philosophical battle with Hegel (who had died several years ago) had considerable effects on Karl Marx’s life. The first of them consisted in his definitive step to philosophical studies; the second, his entry into a society of youth followers of Hegel, called Doctorklub, led by the theology professor Bruno Bauer.

In 1841, Karl Marx would present his doctoral thesis at the University of Jena, in a “Hegelian” analysis of the differences between natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. Later, he would be banned for university education. Why? Marx was widely associated with the left Hegelian atheists. Thus, he would dedicate himself to political journalism, through the Renana Gazette, a liberal opposition instrument sponsored by a group of youth bourgeois colony. His sharp criticism led him to be the director of that gazette, until 1843, the year in which he was censored by the Prussian authorities.

In 1843, he married Jenny von Westphalen, four months later they left Germany and traveled to Paris, where they would join a group of exiled German workers, known as the “League of the Just” or simply: communists. Already in France, Marx is illustrated by the historians of that time, discovers the conjuncture of the class struggle (bourgeoisie and nobility) and accepts the egalitarian and internationalist creed.

In Paris, he meets his loyal friend, collaborator, and protector, Friedrich Engels, son of a major German cloth producer, whose industries were based in England. In 1844, his philosophical formation, his economic and historical knowledge, and the experience of the bitterness of exile converge in Karl Marx; enough combination to strongly criticize capitalism and base his communist objectives. Marx writes this year, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”

a critique that goes hand in hand with the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

That same year he would begin to publish the journal Franco-German Anales, of which only a single issue would be published. In the article Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law, he published his famous phrase “Religion is the opium of the people” and stirred the masses by calling for the uprising of the proletariat.

In 1845, he would be expelled from Paris at the request of the Prussian government so he took refuge in Belgium in the company of his friend Engels, at a time that can be classified as study and action. Karl Marx influenced by Engels stopped philosophizing, and stated that:

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, but the real task is to transform it.”

Together they write important works: The Holy Family (1845), The German Ideology (1845-46), and The Poverty of Philosophy (1847).

In 1847, Marx and Engels received a special order from the League of the Just, renamed the League of the Communists. The request was to write a synthesized exhibition of the association’s objectives, that is, a well-founded practical political program, which would be presented at their next meeting in London. As a result of this request, both produced a statutory manuscript, converted in the end, in a historical pamphlet, the Communist Manifesto, published in February 1848. A key aspect of the manifesto was the anticipation of a revolution, and a wave of revolutionary repercussions; indeed, a class revolution breaks out in France.

“The proletarians have nothing to lose except their chains. They have a world to win. Workers from all countries, unite!” This concludes in the Communist Manifesto.

The revolutions that the manifesto envisaged were carried out in France, Austria, Italy, and Germany; their results hinted at a failed revolution in which even Marx called for an armed insurrection. His revolutionary ideas, increasingly radical, motivated his expulsion from Belgium. He tried to reside again in Germany and France but was systematically expelled. Karl Marx settled permanently in London, in 1849 until 1864.

Karl Marx attends the foundation of the International Association of Workers, September 28, 1864. Marx was invited as the representative of the working class, actively participated in the drafting of the initial report and in the preparation of the statutes. He was elected secretary and in 1872 he faced the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin; who rejected the idea of ​​the creation of a worker’s party. Within The Hague, Bakunin promulgated a perennial phrase:

“Equality without freedom leads to state despotism.”

So, the Bakuninists were expelled from the IWA, a moment that would historically mark the division between socialists and anarchists.

Since 1851, Marx served as the political correspondent for the New York Tribune. In 1859, published the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and years later, the first volume of his most important and famous work would be published in Germany: The Capital, work by which he is called “the founder of scientific socialism”. From 1869 Marx maintained contacts with international socialism.

In 1881, his wife dies, and from then on, Marx began to suffer multiple diseases. Suffering from severe bronchitis, depression due to the loss of his wife and qualified as an international conspirator; Marx abandons politics.

Karl Marx dies on March 14, 1883, in London.