German political philosopher and founder of scientific socialism, one of the most influential thinkers of all times,  Marx was born in the Rhineland area of Germany.  His father was a minor government official and was a non-practicing Jew who came from a long line of Rabbis. In 1835 he went to study at Hamburg University and left a year later to study at Gena University where he received a PhD in philosophy under the direction of Professor Bruno Bauer. Marx’s main intellectual influence was Georg Hegel, who at this time was influential on German University students. Hegel argued, “What is rational is real.” Which was perceived as a “call to action” for German university students—that is, to use reason and rational thinking to critique the political and social order to call for radical reforms.

In 1842, Marx became editor of newspaper Rheinische Zeitung. His writings in the Rheinische Zeitung criticizing contemporary political and social conditions embroiled him in controversy with the authorities, and in 1843 Marx was compelled to resign his editorial post.

Marx then went to Paris, where he met Parisians who liked democracy but needed to address the needs of the people, so went a step beyond to socialism. Marx also adopted this philosophy. In 1844, Engels visited him in Paris, they began a collaboration to elucidate systematically the theoretical principles of communism and to organize an international working-class movement dedicated to those principles.

In 1845 Marx published “The German Ideology”, In 1845 Marx was ordered to leave Paris because of his revolutionary activities. He then settled in Brussels and came in touch with revolutionary groups, called Communist Correspondence Committees. In 1847 these committees were consolidated to form the Communist League, and Marx and Engels were commissioned to formulate a statement of principles. The program they submitted, known throughout the world as the “Communist Manifesto” of 1848. It was the first systematic statement of modern socialist doctrine. Marx contributed the central propositions of the Manifesto, which embody the materialist conception of history, or historical materialism.

This theory was later explicitly formulated in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (1859). Marx drew the conclusion in the Manifesto that the capitalist class would be overthrown and that it would be eliminated by a worldwide working-class revolution and replaced by a classless society.

In 1848 revolutions occurred in France and Germany, and the Belgian government, fearful that the revolutionary tide would engulf Belgium, banished Marx. He went first to Paris and then to the Rhineland. In Cologne he established and edited a communist periodical, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and engaged in organizing activities.

When the Communist League dissolved in 1852, Marx continued to correspond with hundreds of revolutionists with the aim of forming another revolutionary organization. These efforts and those of his many collaborators culminated in 1864 when the “First International” was established in London.

In England Marx devoted himself to study and writing and to efforts to build an international communist movement. During this period he wrote a number of works that are regarded as classics of communist theory. These include his greatest work, Das Capital (volume 1, 1867; volumes 2 and 3, edited by Engels and published posthumously in 1885 and 1894, respectively), a systematic and historical analysis of the economy of the capitalist system of society, in which he developed the theory that the capitalist class exploits the working class by appropriating the “surplus value” produced by the working class.

Marx’s next work, The Civil War in France (1871), analyzed the experience of the short-lived revolutionary government established in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War . In this work Marx interpreted the formation and existence of the Commune as a historical confirmation of his theory that it is necessary for workers to seize political power and then to destroy the capitalist state; he hailed the Commune as “the finally discovered political form under which the economic emancipation of labor could take place.” This theory was explicitly projected in The Gotha Program (1875; translated 1922):

The last eight years of his life were marked by an incessant struggle with physical ailments that impeded his political and literary labors. Manuscripts and notes found after his death revealed that he had projected a fourth volume of Das Kapital to comprise a history of economic doctrines; these fragments were edited by the German socialist Karl Johann Kautsky and published under the title Theories of Surplus Value (4 volumes, 1905-1910; translated 1952).

As Marx gets older he becomes more aware of the democratic role in the possible achievement of socialism. Marx was, contrary to belief, fond of democracy.