Born May 5, 1818
Trier, Germany
Died March 14, 1883
London, England
Economic theorist, philosopher, and revolutionary; father of communist theory.
Karl Marx was one of the most influential economic and political theorists of all time. His critique of capitalism (the economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of factories, farms, and other means of production) and promotion of communism (the economic and social system based on the holding of all property in common) fell on the receptive ears of exploited urban workers in nineteenth-century Europe. In the years since Marx’s death, many nations have undergone communist revolutions and attempted to put Marxism into practice. No nation, however, has achieved the final, ideal state of revolution described by Marx: that in which the central government withers away and the citizens direct their own destiny by producing goods for the benefit of all.
Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany. At the time Trier was part of Prussia—a powerful military empire and monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Prussia became part of the German empire in 1871). Marx’s father, Heinrich Marx, was Jewish by birth but had disavowed his religion because of strong anti-Jewish sentiment at that time in Europe.
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