| Karl Marx |
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Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law at Bonn and Berlin, but took up history and philosophy. Karl Marx was as a man of both brilliance and frailty, a poverty stricken Prussian emigre who became almost an English gentleman; an angry agitator; a gregarious and convivial host; as a devoted family man; and as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink and cigars. He edited a radical newspaper and after it was suppressed on 1843 he moved to Paris. In 1848, with Engels as his closest collaborator, he wrote the Communist Manifesto, which attacked the state as the instrument of oppression, and religion and culture as ideologies of the capitalist class. Marx settled in London in 1849 where he studied economics. Marx' main work `Capital' is a critical analysis of the capitalist system. Karl Marx interpreted history as a never ending struggle between classes which could only be resolved after a revolution would result in a dictatorship of the working class that would abolish the class system altogether. His revolutionary ideas formed the foundations of communist parties all over the world. |
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Recommended
reading:
Karl Marx - Francis Wheen