The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Marx, Karl

1167637The American Cyclopædia — Marx, Karl

MARX, Karl, a German socialist, born in Treves in 1818. He completed his studies in Bonn and Berlin, and became in 1842 chief editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. That journal being suppressed in 1843, he associated himself in Paris with Arnold Ruge in a critical revision of Hegel's “Philosophy of Jurisprudence,” and with Friedrich Engels in the publication of Die heilige Familie, directed against Bruno Bauer and kindred writers. At the same time he attacked Prussia in the press, and at the request of that power he was expelled from France in 1846 and went to Brussels, where he and Engels published in 1848 a manifesto embodying the views of an international congress of workmen held at London in the preceding year; and he was then also expelled from Belgium. The revolution of 1848 enabled him to return to Paris and to Cologne, where he speedily founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a revolutionary journal advocating the refusal of taxes as long as liberty was not established. His continued agitation involved him in perpetual conflicts with the authorities, and in 1849 he was expelled on account of his connection with the insurgents in the grand duchy of Baden. He once more went to Paris, and after the insurrection of June 13 to London, where he has since lived. He issued here in 1850-'51 a monthly edition of the Rheinische Zeitung, printed at Hamburg. In 1864 he was admitted as member of the newly established Internationale, and drew up the manifesto and statutes of this association, which were adopted in 1866 at the congress of Geneva, and henceforth he was officially recognized as the master spirit of that organization. (See International Association.) His principal works are: Misère de la philosophie: Réponse à la Philosophie de la misère de Proudhon (Brussels, 1847); Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Berlin, 1859); Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859); and Herr Vogt (London, 1860), in which he accused Karl Vogt and his adherents of having sold themselves to Napoleon III.