Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Karl Marx was a German philosopher and revolutionary. He laid the foundations of communist doctrine, in which he criticized capitalism. His philosophy influenced many fields of knowledge, such as sociology, politics, law, theology, philosophy and economics, among others.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, a city in the south of the Prussian Rhineland, near the French border, on May 5, 1818. He was the son of Herschel Marx, a lawyer and justice counselor of Jewish descent, who was persecuted by the absolutist government of Frederick William III. In 1835 he completed secondary school at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium. That year and for much of 1836, Karl studied law, history, philosophy, art and literature at the University of Bonn.
At the end of 1836, he went to Berlin, where the ideas of Hegel, the prominent German idealist philosopher, were spreading. Marx aligned himself with the "Young Hegelians" (the Hegelian left), who sought to analyze social questions on the basis of the need for transformations in the German bourgeoisie. Between 1838 and 1840, he devoted himself to writing his thesis, hoping for a teaching post. In 1841, at the University of Jena, he presented the work "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature".
For political reasons, Karl was not appointed: the universities did not accept teachers who followed Hegel's ideas. Disillusioned, he turned to journalism. He wrote articles for the Deutsche Jahrbücher (German Annals) of his friend Arnold Ruge, but censorship prevented their publication. In October 1842, he moved to Cologne and took over as editor of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish Gazette), but shortly after the publication of an article on Russian absolutism, the government shut the paper down.
In July 1843, he married Jenny, the sister of his friend Edgar von Westphalen. The couple moved to Paris, where, together with Ruge, he founded the journal Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (Franco-German Annals), in which he published articles by Friedrich Engels. Marx published "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question". He joined a secret society, but was expelled from the city.
In 1848 he published the "Communist Manifesto", in which he already outlined his main ideas on class struggle and historical materialism. In late 1844, Marx began writing for Vorwärts in Paris. His opinions displeased the government of Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, who pressured the French government to expel the publication's contributors, among them Marx and Engels. In February he was forced to leave France and went to Belgium.
He devoted himself to writing theses on socialism and kept in touch with the European workers' movement. He founded the "German Workers' Association". Together with Engels, he acquired a weekly newspaper, and both joined the "League of the Just", a secret organization of German workers with branches throughout Europe. At the League's 2nd Congress, they were asked to draft a manifesto. Drawing on Engels's work The Principles of Communism, Marx wrote the "Communist Manifesto", which he sent to London in January 1848.
In the work, Karl criticizes capitalism, sets out the history of the workers' movement and ends with an appeal for the union of workers all over the world. Shortly afterwards, Karl and his wife were arrested and expelled from Belgium. After several exiles and hardships, they finally settled in London. Despite the crisis, in 1864 he founded the "International Workingmen's Association" in London, which became known as the "First International". With Engels's help, in 1867 he published the first volume of his most important work, "Capital", in which he summarizes his critique of the capitalist economy.
In writing "Critique of the Gotha Programme", he condemned the program the German socialist party had adopted in 1875. Marx's theories influenced the Russian Revolution of 1917 and theorists and politicians such as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao Zedong. His doctrine thus took hold in several countries, such as the former USSR, China and Cuba.
Karl Heinrich Marx died in London on March 14, 1883, as a result of bronchitis and respiratory problems.
Source: E-Biografias
