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'''Karl Marx''' (1818-1883) was the most important of all socialist thinkers and the creator of a system of thought called [[Marxism]]. He helped organize the international socialist movement. His ideas motivated radical political activists who joined his call to overthrow capitalism. Marxism argued that all events in history are caused by economic forces, especially class conflict between owners and workers. Marx depicted the inevitable evolution from [[feudalism]] to [[capitalism]] (which happened, he argued, during the [[French Revolution]]), to [[socialism]], which was about to happen as soon as the workers got organized. Many intellectuals accepted Marx's "scientific" analysis and prediction. In recent decades there has been little interest in Marx among economists or historians, who nearly unanimously conclude his analysis was faulty and his predictions were wrong, but there is much more among critics of literature, especially in university English departments.  

'''Karl Marx''' (1818-1883) was the most important of all socialist thinkers and the creator of a system of thought called [[Marxism]]. He helped organize the international socialist movement. His ideas motivated radical political activists who joined his call to overthrow capitalism. Marxism argued that all events in history are caused by economic forces, especially class conflict between owners and workers. Marx depicted the inevitable evolution from [[feudalism]] to [[capitalism]] (which happened, he argued, during the [[French Revolution]]), to [[socialism]], which was about to happen as soon as the workers got organized. Many intellectuals accepted Marx's "scientific" analysis and prediction. In recent decades there has been little interest in Marx among economists or historians, who nearly unanimously conclude his analysis was faulty and his predictions were wrong, but there is much more among critics of literature, especially in university English departments.  

==Career==

==Career==

Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a happy, wealthy middle-class home in the Rhineland city of Trier, in Germany. On both sides of his family, he came from a long line of Jewish rabbis; but his father Heinrich Marx (1782-1838), an intellectual and highly respected lawyer, and his family converted to Lutheranism in 1824 when young Marx was six. Intellectually and culturally, Marx was Protestant, not Jewish.  Marx received a good classical education; at age 17, he spent a year in the University of Bonn's law faculty and soaked up its cultural romanticism. At age 18 he became engaged to aristocratic Jenny von Westphalen (1814-1881), daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a prominent member of Trier society, granddaughter of a famous general, and also descended from Scottish nobility. She interested Marx in romantic literature and in the socialist Saint-Simonian movement.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a happy, wealthy middle-class home in the Rhineland city of Trier, in Germany. On both sides of his family, he came from a long line of Jewish rabbis; but his father Heinrich Marx (1782-1838), an intellectual and highly respected lawyer, had his family converted to Lutheranism in 1824 when young Marx was six. Intellectually and culturally, Marx was Protestant, not Jewish.  Marx received a good classical education; at age 17, he spent a year in the University of Bonn's law faculty and soaked up its cultural romanticism. At age 18 he became engaged to aristocratic Jenny von Westphalen (1814-1881), daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a prominent member of Trier society, granddaughter of a famous general, and also descended from Scottish nobility. She interested Marx in romantic literature and in the socialist Saint-Simonian movement.

===Intellectual roots===

===Intellectual roots===

In 1836 Marx transferred to the University of Berlin, at the time the foremost scholarly center in the world. He abandoned his superficial romanticism and came under the influence of the philosophy of the recently deceased [[G. W. F. Hegel]]. which dominated German thought.  Lectures were less important than long conversations with Young Hegelian intellectuals, notably Bruno Bauer; they sought to use Hegelianism to battle the German religious, political, and philosophical status quo. After completing his doctoral thesis (which dealt with the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus), Marx at first hoped to obtain teaching post. When Bauer was dismissed for unorthodoxy in 1842, Marx turned to journalism and began writing for the ''Rheinische Zeitung,'' an opposition daily backed by liberal Rhenish industrialists. He soon became its editor, but the paper was closed by the authorities in May 1843, following an expose by Marx of the miserable poverty of farm workers in the Moselle vinyards, a piece of work that led him, as his friend [[Friedrich Engels]] later said, "from pure politics to economic relationships and so to socialism."  

In 1836 Marx transferred to the University of Berlin, at the time the foremost scholarly center in the world. He abandoned his superficial romanticism and came under the influence of the philosophy of the recently deceased [[G. W. F. Hegel]]. which dominated German thought.  Lectures were less important than long conversations with Young Hegelian intellectuals, notably Bruno Bauer; they sought to use Hegelianism to battle the German religious, political, and philosophical status quo. After completing his doctoral thesis (which dealt with the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus), Marx at first hoped to obtain teaching post. When Bauer was dismissed for unorthodoxy in 1842, Marx turned to journalism and began writing for the ''Rheinische Zeitung,'' an opposition daily backed by liberal Rhenish industrialists. He soon became its editor, but the paper was closed by the authorities in May 1843, following an expose by Marx of the miserable poverty of farm workers in the Moselle vinyards, a piece of work that led him, as his friend [[Friedrich Engels]] later said, "from pure politics to economic relationships and so to socialism."