Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier (Rhenish
Prussia). His father was a lawyer, a Jew who converted to Protestantism in
1824. The family was wealthy, educated, but not revolutionary. After completion
of the Gymnasium in Trier, Marx entered the university, first at Bonn, then in
Berlin, and studied law, after that history and philosophy.
After completion of university studies, Marx moved to Bonn
reckoning for a professorship, however this path was barred by the government's
growing opposition to classical liberalism and the Young Hegelians.
Hence, he moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became the editor
in chief for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhineland News")
which he continued to do so till 1848.
In 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in Kreuznach, his
childhood friend, with whom he was engaged as a student. His wife came from a
reactionary Prussian aristocratic family. Her older brother was Prussian
minister of the interior in one of the most reactionary periods.
Marx then went to Paris, where he mingled with many famous
radicals. On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at
the Café de la Régence. Engels showed Marx his recently published The Condition
of the Working Class in England in 1844, convincing Marx that the working class
would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history.
In 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret society, ‘the Communist
League’, took a prominent part in the Second Congress on November 1847 in
London and then wrote their famous, work published in February 1848 ‘Communist
Manifesto’. With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new
world-conception, consistent with materialism, which also embrace the realm of
social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of
development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic
revolutionary role of the proletariat—the creator of a new, communist society.
On the outbreak of the Revolution of February 1848, Marx was
banished from Belgium. He returned to Paris, whence, after the March
Revolution, he went to Cologne, Germany, where Neue Rheinische Zeitung was
published from June 1, 1848, to May 19, 1849, with Marx as editor-in-chief. The
new theory was splendidly confirmed by the course of the revolutionary events
of 1848-49, just as it has been subsequently confirmed by all proletarian and
democratic movements in all countries of the world. The victorious
counter-revolution first instigated court proceedings against Marx (he was
acquitted on February 9, 1849), and then banished him from Germany (May 16,
1849). First Marx went to Paris, was again banished after the demonstration of
June 13, 1849.
He then immigrated to London and settled there in 1849, till
his death. In London, Marx required financial support from his collaborator and
friend Engles, for, just as some men are addicted to gambling, Marx was
addicted to reading and writing, and these activities did not produce much of
an income.
In 1867 the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a
work which analysed the capitalist process of production.[166] Here Marx
elaborated his labour theory of value, which had been influenced by Thomas
Hodgskin.
Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, when not confined to bed by
illness, Marx regularly spent ten hours in the library of the British museum
studying and writing.
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