Karl Marx

Western Philosophy 19th-century philosophy
Full name	Karl Heinrich Marx
Born	May 5th, 1818 Trier, Prussia
Died	March 14, 1883 (aged 64) London, United Kingdom
School/tradition	Young Hegelian, Hegelianism, Marxism, socialism
Main interests	Politics, Economics, Philosophy, Sociology, class struggle, History
Notable ideas	Co-founder of Marxism (with Engels), the Theory of Surplus Value, alienation and exploitation of the worker, The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Materialist conception of history

Karl Marx as a teenager

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, in the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. His father, Heinrich Marx, a successful lawyer, was a man of the Enlightenment, devoted to Kant and Voltaire, who took part in agitations for a constitution in Prussia. His mother, born Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and were descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl was born, his father—probably because his professional career required it—was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church. Karl was baptized when he was six years old.

Marx in 1882

Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the educated daughter of a Prussian baron, on June 19, 1843 in the Pauluskirche at Bad Kreuznach. Marx and Jenny had seven children but due to poverty only three survived to adulthood. Marx's major source of income was from the support of Friedrich Engels, who was drawing a steadily increasing income from the family business in Manchester. This was supplemented by weekly articles written as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. Inheritances from one of Jenny's uncles and her mother who died in 1856 allowed the family to move to somewhat more salubrious lodgings at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town a new suburb on the then-outskirts of London. Marx generally lived a hand-to-mouth existence, forever at the limits of his resources, although this did to some extent depend upon his spending on relatively bourgeois luxuries, which he felt were necessities for his wife and children given their social status and the mores of the time.

Marx had seven children by his wife: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–83); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–52); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–98) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). Marx also fathered an illegitimate son by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth.

Karl Marx's Tomb at Highgate Cemetery London

Following the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on March 14, 1883. He died a stateless person^{[10][not in citation given]}; family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate Cemetery, London, on March 17, 1883. Marx's tombstone bears the carved messages: “WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE,” the final line of The Communist Manifesto, and Engels's version of the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach:

“

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it

”

The Communist Party of Great Britain had the monumental tombstone built in 1954 with a portrait bust by Laurence Bradshaw; Marx's original tomb had had only humble adornment.In 1970 there was an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the monument using a homemade bomb.

Several of Marx's closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels's speech included the words

“

On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever.

”

In addition to Engels and Liebknecht, Marx's daughter Eleanor and Charles Longuet and Paul Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, also attended his funeral. Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short statement in French. Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also read out. Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the funeral. Those attending the funeral included Friedrich Lessner, who had been sentenced to three years in prison at the Cologne communist trial of 1852; G. Lochner, who was described by Engels as "an old member of the Communist League" and Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal Society, but also an old communist associate of Marx and Engels. Three others attended the funeral—Ray Lankester, Sir John Noe and Leonard Church.

Cultural historians may regard Karl Marx as the first major social theorist to form a series of concepts within the break between modern and premodern societies.