Life
Karl Marx in their own century
Trained in law and philosophy in Bonn and Berlin, Marx worked as a radical journalist, was expelled from Prussia, France and Belgium in turn, and settled in London in 1849, where he wrote Capital in poverty supported largely by Friedrich Engels.
He wrote from the first industrial economy, using British factory inspectors’ reports and the reading room of the British Museum, in the decades between the revolutions of 1848 and the First International.
Central ideas
Historical materialism
How a society produces and reproduces its life shapes its law, politics and ideas, so explanation begins with material relations rather than with spirit.
Alienation
Wage labour separates people from the product, the activity, other workers and their own capacities — a loss that is structural, not a mood.
Class struggle
History moves through conflict between classes defined by their position in production, which makes politics a question of power rather than of persuasion alone.
Criticism & debate
His predictions of falling profits and inevitable revolution have not held; critics from Arendt to Popper argue that his politics leaves individual freedom and plural institutions unprotected, and states claiming his name committed mass atrocities.
Influence
He founded modern critical social science: sociology, economic history, dependency theory and critical theory all argue with him, and labour movements worldwide drew on his work.
How to read them
Begin Karl Marx with the tension between historical materialism and alienation. Read the major works slowly enough to notice how biography, public crisis and method shape the argument rather than treating the thinker as a list of doctrines.
If Karl Marx is right about historical materialism, what habit of judgement would have to change first?
In their words
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”