Marx, Karl

Marx, Karl (1818–83). German revolutionary socialist. Born in the Rhineland to Jewish parents, Marx was educated in law, history, and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin before obtaining his doctorate on Greek philosophy at Jena in 1841. A radical young Hegelian, he turned to journalism, editing the liberal Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne until it was suppressed by the Prussian authorities in 1843. From then on Marx became virtually an exile, fleeing first to Paris where he began his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels, then to Brussels to meet workers' groups, where he and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848) as a rallying call for the proletarian class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. In 1849 he was tried for sedition, and though found not guilty, he was exiled once more, and made his home in London, studying and writing in the British Museum, and living off Engels's generous allowances. His most important book was Capital in which he set out to expose the flaws in classical political economy by showing how capitalism was not a neutral economic system, founded on timeless laws of supply and demand, but a highly exploitative system, characterized by contradictions that would eventually undermine and destroy it.