A Philosopher Who Revolutionized the Modern World
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was the German philosopher and radical socialist whose Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital formed the basis of Marxism, and revolutionized the world for better and for worse. Born in Prussia, he experimented with sociopolitical theories in university, and by the 1840s had become a radical journalist. His writings were viewed as dangerous by the authorities, and in the span of a few years he was expelled from Germany, France, Belgium, then Germany again, before he found refuge in London. There, he settled and lived for the remainder of his life. Karl Marx’s father was a successful lawyer, a man of the Enlightenment, and a passionate advocate for Prussian reform. He had converted from Judaism to Lutheranism to avoid legal restrictions that barred Jews from high society.
Karl received a liberal education in a school whose enlightened leanings made it suspect in the eyes of the reactionary authority. So they raided it in the 1830s, confiscated writings deemed subversive from its library, and forced changes in the academic staff. Marx’s early years of higher education were marked by poor grades, jail for drunkenness, riotous behavior, and general rowdiness, before he buckled down to serious study of the law and philosophy. He was strongly influenced by the philosopher Hegel. He joined a radical student group known as the Young Hegelians, which began his transformation into a radical, and eventually revolutionary, thinker.
