Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx lived from May 5, 1818 to March 14, 1883. He was a philosopher, political economist, sociologist, political theorist, revolutionary, and a humanist. Mr. Marx is often known as the father of communism. He was a political activist. He also analysed history.

He wrote in The Communist Manifesto,

"The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

Not many people knew about Mr. Marx during his lifetime. Soon after he died, all the ideas he had gave a real influence on workers' movements. His influence was given extra force when the Marxist Bolsheviks had victory in the Russian October Revolution. Few parts of the world weren't touched by Marxain ideas during the 1800's.

He was the third child out of seven children. Karl Marx’s family was Jewish. They lived in Trier, which is in the Kingdom of Prussia’s Province of the Lower Rhine.

Karl Marx’s father (Heinrich, 1777 through 1838) was in a long line of rabbis, and then converted to Christianity—even though he tended to be a diest. The older Mr. Marx also admired Englightenment people, like Rousseau and Voltaire. He was actually born Hershel Mordechai. When the Prussian athorities banned him from practicing law as a Jew, he joined the Lutheran denomination. The official denomination of the Prussian state was actually Lutheren.

Karl Marxs mother was Henrietta (1788 through 1863). Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline

He was a homeschooler until he was thirteen. He graduated from the Trier Gymnasium and enrolled in the University of Bonn (1835). Karl Marx was seventeen when he began studying law. He joined the Trier Tavern Club, a drinking society and served as its president for a while. Mr. Marx’s grades dropped during his time in the Club. He was really interested in literature and phylosiphy, but his father disaproved of it. The older Mr. Marx thought that his son couldn’t support himself highly enough.

After Mr. Marx began law school, his father made him go to a far more school-enclined and serious Friedrich-Wihelms universitat in Berlin. While there, Mr. Marx wrote a lot of poems and essays about life. He used the theological language that he had picked up from his deistic, liberal father (like “the Deity,”) but also used atheistic philosophies of the Young Hegelians—who were very active in Berlin at the time.

In 1841, he wrote a thesis called The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosphy of Nature and earned a doctorate. He had to submit it to the University of Jena. Mr. Marx was warned that because he was a Young Hegelain radical and was known as one amoung the faculty, the thesis would have a bad reception in Berlin.

When Europe began to have a lot of revolutions, Mr. Marx was arrested and banned from Belgium. A radical movement had taken power from King Louis-Philipe in France. They asked Mr. Marx to go back to Paris.

Mr. Marx witnessed the June Days uprising first hand.

When the uprising collapsed in 1849, he went back to Cologne. Mr. Marx started the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

While the newspaper was still around, Mr. Marx was put on trial twice because of a press misdemeanor. Then, he was charged with a suggestion of an armed rebellion. He was aquitted both times. Eventually, the paper was suppressed.

Mr. Marx went back to Paris, but had to move to London. in May 1849.

He stayed there for the rest of his life.