Karl Marx 1818 – 1883
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was a German philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Marxism and Continental Philosophy.
Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work founded the tradition of thought that bears his name. With Friedrich Engels he co-authored the Communist Manifesto in 1848, and his major theoretical work, Capital, set out a systematic analysis of capitalist production, value, and class. The materialist conception of history, the labour theory of value, and the analysis of commodity fetishism remain central reference points across the social sciences and humanities. Marx spent much of his life as a stateless political exile, ultimately settling in London. His influence on 20th-century political movements, social theory, and philosophy has been larger than that of almost any other modern thinker.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was born in Trier in the Rhineland and trained as a Hegelian philosopher at the universities of Bonn and Berlin before turning to political journalism and political economy. Expelled from Germany, then France, then Belgium for his political activities, he settled in London in 1849 and lived there for the rest of his life, supported partly by his collaborator Friedrich Engels.
Marx's mature work is a comprehensive critical analysis of capitalism. The Communist Manifesto (1848), co-written with Engels in the run-up to the 1848 European revolutions, is the most widely-read political pamphlet of the modern era. Capital, Volume I (1867), is the systematic analysis of the wage relation, the labor theory of value, and the dynamics of capital accumulation. The 1844 Manuscripts and the Grundrisse — both unpublished in his lifetime — develop the philosophical anthropology of alienation that frames the later economic work.
Marx's intellectual project was inseparable from political activity. He helped found the International Working Men's Association in 1864 and corresponded with revolutionary movements across Europe and Russia. The twentieth-century history of Marxism — its political triumphs, catastrophes, and theoretical refinements through Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and the New Left — would have astonished him. He died in London in 1883, with his work on the second and third volumes of Capital incomplete.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Marxism, Continental Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Karl Marx:
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
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Attributed to Karl Marx:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
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“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern. -
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-ope -
Attributed to Karl Marx:
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
Karl Marx by topic
Karl Marx vs other philosophers
Three-way comparisons including Karl Marx
Frequently asked about Karl Marx
- When did Karl Marx live?
- Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died in 1883.
- Where was Karl Marx from?
- Karl Marx was a German philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Karl Marx associated with?
- Karl Marx was associated with Marxism and Continental Philosophy.
- What was Karl Marx known for?
- Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work founded the tradition of thought that bears his name.
- How many quotes are attributed to Karl Marx?
- There are 47 attributed quotations from Karl Marx in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from Karl Marx
These lines are widely circulated as Karl Marx, but they do not appear in Karl Marx's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Leo Tolstoy in Romance and Reality (1912) by Holbrook Jackson.
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“Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Paraphrased and misattributed, actually from "Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik" ("The Music of the Nineteenth Century, and its Culture") by Adolf Bernhard Marx : "Die Kunst ist stets und überall das geheime Bekenntnis und unsterbliche Denkmal ihrer Zeit." ("A
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“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Said to be a quote from Das Kapital in an anonymous email, this attribution has been debunked at Snopes.com with the earliest occurrence found being a post by Gpkkid on 23 December 2008 ; it was used as a basis of a satirical article "Americans to Undergo Preschool Reeducation in Advance of Country'
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“We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Often attributed to Lenin or Stalin , less often to Marx. According to the book, "They Never Said It", p. 64, the phrase derives from a rumour that Lenin said this to one of his close associates, Grigori Zinoviev, not long after a meeting of the Politburo in the early 1920s, but there is no evidence
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“If we were to hang the last capitalist, another would appear to sell us the rope.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: A variant of the above misquote, sometimes also attributed to Lenin. This gained popularity during the glasnost era when black market activity was at its most visible in the USSR; meant to show the profit motive was human nature and cannot be eradicated.
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“Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you're in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Karl Marx, a composer with the same name.
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“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Marx (possibly in jest) in W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion (2003).
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“Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Written in a letter to Francois Lafargue in Bordeaux, 12 November 1866 as published in MECW Volume 42, p. 334. as "That a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything," which was a restating of the phrase wine, women and song that was attributed to Martin Luther at that time.
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“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905): 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The popular reformulation as 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' compresses and slightly alters Santayana's wording. The line is also frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, neither of whom wrote it.
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“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”
Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin , paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France .
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“Democracy is the road to socialism.”
Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48, but the earliest occurrence of this yet located is in The Communist Review (1952) by the Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 15, where it is used to characterize the Communist agenda. (Disputed.)