Clothier

                                                                Brett Clothier

                                                                01/18/2003

                                                                1st-Sociology

Karl Marx

        Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier in the Rhineland, where he completed his early schooling.  His fathers side of the family were all rabbis.  His father was a prosperous lawyer who adopted Lutheranism for himself and his family in 1824.  His mother was from Hungary, and she never learned to read or speak German. At the age of seventeen, he was sent to the University of Bonn to study law.  After he was in a duel, he was transferred to the University of Berlin.  Instead of applying himself to studying law, Marx began to read the Latin, English, and Italian classics and became interested in philosophy.  At the age of nineteen, he became a member of a group who gathered to discuss the interpretations of religious and philosophical views.  The triumph of conservatism in government and education led Marx to hurry to complete his university work.  Marx received his doctoral degree in 1841.

        Marx was convinced that an academic career was over and he turned to journalism.  In October of 1842, he became editor of a newspaper in Cologne.  In the paper, he defended the wine-growing peasants against the wood-theft laws, and expressed his growing awareness of economic issues.  This is where he first thought of the idea of physical force overthrowing physical force.  Marx later said that this led him to move from pure politics to socialism.

        After this event, Marx married his longtime girlfriend, Jenny von Westphalen, a member of the aristocracy, and they went to Paris for Marx to study socialism. While in Paris, Marx met Friedrich Engels with whom he began a lifelong friendship.  In 1845 Marx left France after the Prussian government ordered him to.  Marx went to Brussels with Engels where he sketched his theory of history.  There they wrote German Ideology, which was not published until 1932.  They then joined a communistic society called the League of Communists.  When the society met in London in 1847, Marx and Engels were both present. There they wrote the Communist Manifesto.  Engels wrote a first draft which was rewritten by Marx.

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        Soon after its publication, the February Revolution of 1848 broke out in France.  Marx and Engels visited France while on their way to Cologne to help the revolution there.  They then founded a newspaper and were able to support their campaign for revolution.  The paper was then suppressed, and Marx was prosecuted for treason and expelled from Prussia.  He then went to England.

        Marx lived the last thirty-four years of his life in England.  Living in Soho, he and his family lived off the money that Engels sent them.  Most of his time was spent reading newspapers in the ...

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