Karl Marx Marx's Impact Can Only Be

Karl Marx Marx's impact can only be compared with that of religious figures like Jesus or Muhammad. Nearly four out of every ten people alive today live under governments which consider themselves Marxist" (Singer, 1). Many people may consider that account to be an overstatement of Marx's historical importance, nevertheless he was undoubtedly the greatest thinker and philosopher of his, and recent, times. His theories on life, and on the social and economic structure of nations, have revolutionized the way in which people think (McLellan, 8).

His life contributed to the way people think today, and because of him people are more open to suggestion and are quicker to create ideas on political, economic, and social issues. Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the Prussian town of Trier. His parents, Heinrich and Henrietta were comfortably off, but by no means wealthy, and held liberal, but not radical, political and religious views. After attending university in Bonn, he went on to study law, history, and philosophy at Berlin University.

Upon completing his education, Marx became associated with the "Left Hegelians," a group who developed and promoted atheistic and revolutionary ideas adopted from Hegel's philosophy (Singer, 2). In 1842 Marx, pursued his interest in journalism and wrote contributions on social, political, and philosophical issues for the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish Gazette), a German newspaper paper which, at that time, had only 400 subscribers (McLellan, 14).

In the October of 1842, as the paper became more and more revolutionary and widely read, Marx was promoted to editor-in-chief, just as the German government decided to censor, and eventually to suppress it. In March 1843, and with a continually growing readership of over 3,400 subscribers, the paper was inevitably banned (McLellan, 15). In 1843 Marx was married to his childhood friend Jenny Von Westphalen and moved to Paris to accept an invitation to become co-editor of a newly founded publication, the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (German-French Annals).

The publication was extremely short lived, but the communist and revolutionary ideas that Mrx had expressed in his few contributions led the Prussian authorities to issue a warrant for his arrest, should he ever return to Germany (Singer, 4). Throughout 1844, Marx developed his philosophy on politics, economics, and historical processes. It was also at this time that he met and began a lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels who, although being the son of a wealthy German industrialist, was also a revolutionary socialist (Singer, 4).

The following year, 1845, Marx published his first book, The Holy Family; a revolutionary book that presented Marx's materialist view of the history of man. Later that same year Marx was expelled from France as a dangerous revolutionary, forcing him to move to Brussels (McLellan, 24). Engels provided financial assistance to Marx at this time, to ensure that his family was supported, and the two friends left to study economics in England.

While there, Marx attended a meeting of the newly formed Communist League in December 1847 and was asked to produce a written doctrine for them. The result was that Marx and Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto, which was published in February 1848 and has became the classic outline of Marx's theory (McLellan, 36). With the French Revolution of 1848, Marx was again expelled, this time from Belgium. However, the changing political climate allowed him to return first to France and then to Germany.

After another attempt to launch a radical newspaper, this time the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhenish Gazette), Marx moved to London, where he spent the remainder of his life (Singer, 5). By this time Marx had four children and so little money that without financial help from his close friend Engels, he would have not been able to continue his writing. In 1851, Marx had no regular income and he had undergone the personal tragedy of the death of three children.

However, in the summer of 1851 he became a correspondent for New York Tribune and, when his wife received an inheritance in 1856, the family were able to move to the more comfortable surroundings of Hampstead Heath, and Marx entered his most productive, and influential, period (Singer, 7). Marx resumed his study of political economy and during the decade between 1850 and 1860, while the world economy was booming, Marx predicted the over production crisis. He was proved correct, with the onset of sharp cut backs, massive close downs, numerous bankruptcies, and plummeting prices.

Marx wrote numerous articles explaining why the worldwide capitalist crisis occurred, and presenting his ideological argument that capitalism is a cycle in which over production is inevitable. By 1857 he had produced an eight hundred-page manuscript on capital, landed property, wage labor, the state, foreign trade and the world market. Then, in the early 1860s he concentrated his efforts on composing three large volumes; Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed the major theorists of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo (Singer, 53).

It was not, however, until 1867 that Marx published Volume I of his work, which he titled Capital, as it was a work that examined the entirety of the capitalist process of production (McLellan, 42). In Capital, Marx detailed his ideas of the labor theory value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation. Although he had finished Volumes II and III during the 1860s, Marx continued to work on the manuscripts for the rest of his life, leaving Engels to posthumously publish them. One of the primary reasons for.