Karl Marx

Karl Marx, an influential political philosopher, was born 1818 in Trier, Germany and died 1883 in London, England. He studied Journalism at the University of Berlin and went on to edit the [Rheinische Zeitung]?, a radical German newspaper, which was later shut down in part due to Marx's articles. He moved to France and began working with [Friedrich Engels]?. After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved to Brussels. It was there that in 1848 he wrote his most famous work, The Communist Manifesto together with Engels. His other notable work is the multivolume [Das Kapital]?.

The Communist Manifesto outlined a political and economic philosophy later dubbed Marxism after its creator. After Marx's death, the idealistic visions of Marxism were transformed by Vladimir Lenin into Leninism?, and this in turn was used by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to create their own political philosophies. In the 1920s and '30s, a group of dissident Marxists created a school that espoused the ideas of [critical theory]? (unrelated to Critical philosophy), railing against many of those who supposedly followed Marx's ideas.