Karl Marx was born into Germany's middle class, though he himself was on the relatively wealthy end. He was married and have several children, though not all of them made it to adulthood. Only three of his children with his wife, and his illegitimate son with the maid, made it to adulthood. His illegitimate son was raised by foster parents out of the home to avoid scandal, but the maid stayed with the family.
Marx started out at the University of Bonn, but then transferred to the University of Berlin because his father wanted him to take his studies more seriously. There, Marx was heavily influenced by the ideology of the recently deceased Berlin professor and philosopher G.W.F Hegel. Hegel was popular for his philosophy of the Mind, in which the Mind is kind of everything, and we are all apart of this universal Mind. Marx spent time with the Young Hegelians, but eventually decided he needed to finish his PhD and move on. He submitted his thesis not to the University of Berlin, but to the University of Jena, which was said to be somewhat of a degree mill of the the time.
Marx moved around various countries, getting kicked out by the Prussians who ruled Germany at the time because of his socialist views on politics that were very anti-Prussian. He eventually got kicked out of France and later Belgium, and spent the latter half of his life in England. He collaborated extensively with Friedrich Engels, and constantly bummed off him. Marx was relatively poor in the first half of his life because of his political views and activities, and his family really only got along because of the charity of Engels. Later, when Marx became relatively affluent due to several inheritences and moved to an eight-bedroom home in London, he still bummed money off of Engels.
One of Marx's earlier and well-known written works is the Theses on Feuerbach. This was made famous for the quote: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” In it, Marx put forth his idea of historical materialism: the world is changed not by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice.
Marx's most famous work is the Communist Manifesto, a political pamphlet both he and Engels wrote. In the opening lines of the pamphlet, the principle of Marxism is presented: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The Communist Manifesto examined the struggle between the bourgeoisie (wealthy middle class) and the proletariat (industrial working class). Its main purpose was to establish why the Communist League was in the best interest of the proletariat, which was the political group Marx (and Engels) was heavily influencing.
Marx was very critical of the socio-economic system of the time: capitalism. He called it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, run by the wealthy classes purely for their own benefit. Marx believed that like previous socio-economic systems it would produce internal struggles and collapse, and be replaced by socialism. In a socialist society, the working class would govern in a workers’ democracy. Socialism, in turn, would be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. He believed both were inevitable, but fought for the actual implementation of the former, calling upon the underprivileged and social theorists to perform and organized revolution to topple capitalism.
In a large multi-part work called the Capital, Marx analyzed the capital system in great depth, noting its various stages and characteristics and put forth theories why it must inevitably fail. I obviously have not read his work on capitalism, but thinking of the capital system at the time, I wonder if Marx was right that it would have failed as it stood. However, I don't think capitalism then and capitalism today is the same. Instead, the system evolved and hopefully a great deal of its flaws and weaknesses of the time have been overcome.
Marx was characterized as one of the most influential thinkers of his time. I don't believe he was the first one to think of socialism or communism, but rather he put forth strong ideas about both that many people adopted as a basis for later forms of socialism and communism. Socialist governments building on Marxist theories arrived in the 20th century: the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. These governments built on Marxist principles and developed into Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism
To me, Marx was very contradictory. His Communist Manifesto calls for the abolition of inheritances, yet he clearly needed and enjoyed his several inheritances. It calls for the working class to work together, etc, but he seemed kind of a bum if you ask me, always bumming off Engels. He defended against the idea that communism supports free love, yet fathered a son with the house maid. I barely skimmed the surface of Marx's life here, and lifetimes could be spent discussing his theories and the impact they had on society, and whether they were for good or bad. I am am from the United States, which is a capitalist society, and it is somehow driven into our minds growing up that capitalism is good and socialism and communism is bad. Our history books pretty clearly pain this picture, painting historical figures like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Castro as corrupt dictators who abused their power. And from our perspective in the USA, it certainly looks that way. But have you ever wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a communist country, and what their textbooks have to say about us?
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