Marx , Karl , 1818-1883 , communist, economist and philosopher

Born 1818 in Trier, Prussia; studied at the University of Bonn, 1835-1836, and the University of Berlin, 1836-1841; contributor to and editor of the Cologne liberal democratic newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, 1842; following marriage to Jenny von Westphalen, moved to Paris, where he became a revolutionary and communist; co-editor, with Arnold Ruge, of a new review, the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (German-French Yearbooks), 1843-1845, during which time he met Friedrich Engels; expelled from France, 1845, moved to Belgium, and renounced Prussian nationality; wrote and published Die heilige Familie (1845) with Engels; in Jun 1847 joined a secret society in London, the League of the Just, which afterwards became the Communist League, for whom he and Engels wrote a pamphlet entitled The Communist Manifesto, (1848); returned to Prussia, 1848, where he founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1849, and used the newspaper to urge a constitutional democracy and war with Russia; became leader of the Workers' Union and organized the first Rhineland Democratic Congress in August 1848; banished in May 1849, and moved to London; European correspondent for the New York Tribune, 1851-1862, though for the most part he and his family lived in poverty; published his first book on economic theory, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy), 1859; member of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, 1864-1876; published Das Kapital, Berlin 1867 (the second and third volumes, unfinished by Marx, were edited by Engels and published in 1885 and 1894); died 1883.