MARX, Karl. — Materialist philosopher, co-founder with Engels of the so-called scientific socialism, born in Trier on 5 May 1818 to Jewish parents (later his father, to avoid the persecutions to which Jews were subjected, had himself and his whole family baptised), died in London on 14 March 1883.
In his youth Marx was influenced by his father’s Enlightenment views and by the romanticism of Baron von Westphalen, a family friend whose daughter Jenny he married in 1843. From 1830 to 1835 he attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier, sympathising with professors of rationalist and liberal tendencies. In 1835 he enrolled at the University of Bonn and in 1836 at that of Berlin. Initially anti-Hegelian, in the spring of 1837 he joined a circle of Young Left Hegelians known as the Doktorclub.
After enrolling in the faculty of law at his father’s wish, following the latter’s death (10 May 1838) he decided to graduate in philosophy. At the University of Jena he defended a thesis entitled Differenz der demokratischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie, in which, under the influence of the Left Hegelians (Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, A. Ruge, etc.), he adopted clearly anti-religious attitudes.
Having moved to Bonn, Marx turned towards practical activity. He wrote for the Deutsche Jahrbücher, founded by A. Ruge in 1837, and then for the Rheinische Zeitung, of which he took charge in Cologne in the autumn of 1842, fighting for the proletariat and press freedom against the government (which threatened to suppress the newspaper). Marx took advantage of this to leave the editorship on 17 March 1843 and retired to study political economy, in which he felt himself unprepared. From these studies would emerge his materialist conception of history and the theory of “surplus value.” At A. Ruge’s invitation, Marx went to Paris to found the journal Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher, which ceased publication after two issues due to failure and to the growing estrangement between Marx and Ruge. In Paris Marx surrounded himself with left-wing intellectuals; he befriended E. Heine and G. Proudhon, who later, because of ideological differences, became an adversary and wrote against him in *La philosophie de la misère* (1846), to which Marx replied in *La misère de la philosophie* (1846). In the summer of 1844 in Paris Marx ENGELTAL (v.), whom he had met at the offices of the *Rheinische Zeitung*. In 1845, under pressure from the Prussian government, France expelled Marx, who went to Brussels; there, in the spring of 1845, Engels joined him to discuss the elaboration of the materialist conception of history, which Marx had meditated in Paris. The fruit of these discussions was the work *Die heilige Familie*, directed against the “degeneration” of the Hegelian idealism of Bruno Bauer and his friends. Also composed at this time was *L’ideologia tedesca: Kritik der neuesten deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repräsentanten Feuerbach, B. Bauer und Stirner, sowie des deutschen Sozialismus in seinen verschiedenen Propheten*. This work was not published at the time (discovered in 1920, it was published in 1926 in the *Marx-Engels-Archiv* and later in the editions curated by Rjazanov). *The German Ideology* is the first exposition of historical materialism: it denies the primacy of the Idea in history, substituting the economic fact; material activity or praxis is the foundation of history and of all human activities—politics, religion, morality, etc. With this, Marx and Engels definitively opposed every form of petty-bourgeois socialism, interpreting social ideology according to the “new” materialist conception. They took control of the *Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung*, acted within the Democratic Association of Brussels, and founded the *Deutsche Arbeiterverein*, composed of German refugees.
At the end of 1847, commissioned by the “League of Communists,” Marx, using a draft by Engels, composed the famous *Manifest der kommunistischen Partei*, published a few days before the outbreak of the 1848 revolution (v. COMMUNISM). Expelled from Belgium, Marx went to Paris and with Engels fomented the revolution in Germany. He then moved to Cologne, where in June 1848 he took charge of the revolutionary *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, to which Engels, Lassalle, and others contributed. On 19 March 1849 the newspaper ceased publication; Marx returned to Paris and, threatened by the government, fled to London.
In London Marx suffered family misfortunes and especially great poverty, alleviated in part by the help of friends and by writing articles for various newspapers, always poorly remunerated; only Engels’s generosity relieved him from misery. He was continually embroiled in polemics with the refugees in London due to ideological differences and also because of his irascible and strange character. In London Marx devoted himself to manifold studies, particularly in political economy; the fruit of this was *Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie* (1859), which Marx considered an introduction to *Das Kapital*, of which he published the first volume in 1867. The fundamental idea is the theory of “surplus value” (surplus value): the capitalist buys the worker’s labour, crystallised in the commodity, and sells it at an excessive price; the excess is the “surplus value,” which should go to the worker but instead is pocketed by the capitalist, increasing his capital. The second and third volumes were published posthumously under Engels’s care in 1885 and 1889 respectively, and from 1905 to 1910 a fourth volume was published under the care of Engels, E. Bibbins Aveling, P. Lafargue, and K. Kautsky, all composed of scattered notes and manuscripts by Marx. On 28 September 1864 Marx attended the international workers’ meeting in St Martin’s Hall, where the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association was decided. Marx joined enthusiastically, prevailed with his ideas, collaborated actively in the organisation, and engaged in continual polemics with M. Bakunin and other tendencies (anarchism in Spain and Italy, Mazzinianism in Italy, Lassallism in Germany). To fight from abroad, intensified after the Paris Commune, and especially to fight in Germany, Marx allowed the First International (v.) to die, transferring its General Council to New York in 1873. From then on, although he exercised great influence on European socialism, Marx withdrew from agitation. His health, moreover, had been ruined by work. Generously supported by Engels, he travelled to famous health resorts, but in vain. On 2 December 1881 his wife died, and in January 1883 his daughter Jenny; a month later he too passed away. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.
For an in-depth examination of Marxist philosophical conceptions V. MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO; MATERIALISMO STORICO; for the theory of surplus value, V. VALORE; for Marx’s influence on socialism, the International, communism, Bolshevism, V. the relevant entries.