Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, economist, journalist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work reshaped modern politics and social theory. His major works include The Communist Manifesto, written with Friedrich Engels, Das Kapital, The German Ideology, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx mattered because he analyzed capitalism through class struggle, labor, exploitation, commodity production, ideology, and historical materialism. His influence on socialism, communism, labor movements, sociology, economics, and political conflict has been immense and fiercely contested. Exiled for much of his life, he worked in poverty and scholarship in London. His quotes endure because they carry the impatience of a thinker who believed he had already said enough and wanted thought to become historical action. His work still shapes arguments about labor, power, and historical change.

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