Fitsum Mitike.
Biography: Karl Heinrich Marx
Montgomery College
Naaman Foster
February 6, 2015
Karl Heinrich Marx, born in Prussia May 5, 1818, was a German philosopher, an economist, a socialist and a sociologist among other things. At the age of 17, Marx went to the University of Bonn to study law and philosophy; he earned his doctorate at the age of twenty-three. Here he became engaged to Jenny von West phalen.
During his stay at the university, Marx joined a movement known as the young Hegelians. The group opposed the cultural and political establishments of the day. In 1848, Friedrich Engels, a German thinker, and Marx published The Communist Manifesto, introducing the concept that socialism was a result of the existing problems in the capitalist system. The Manifesto differentiates proposes social class reforms and has a description of the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, also known as Marxist theory. It also encourages workers to revolt against the existing regime.
The panic caused by the social revolution happening throughout Europe in 1848 caused the Belgian government to exile Marx from Brussels. Marx was invited by the French government to return to Paris. After that, Marx returned to Cologne with his friends to start the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhenish Newspaper: Organ of Democracy). The government attempted to shut down the paper through legal means and succeeded by finding pretexts to expel the editors. Marx and his colleagues were expelled after the revolt of 1849. He then returned to Paris where he was immediately expelled and travelled to London where he wrote the first volume of Das Kapital and spent the rest of his life.Das Kapital was his major work on political economy, capital, landed property, the state, wage labor, foreign trade and the world market.
While in Londonconfident that there will be another revolution, Marx rejoined the communist league. Marx continued to write about the revolution of 1848 and its effect titled, The Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He believed that another revolution would only be possible if another crisis was caused, and hoped he would uncover it. For the first years in London Soho, Marx, his wife Jenny and their four children live in an impecunious state. The family mainly survived from gifts provided by Marx’s friend