Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 5

arl Marx[note 1] (/m??rks/;[6] German: ['ka??l 'ma??

ks]; 5 May 1818


14 March 188
3) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary soci
alist. Born in Trier to a middle-class family, he later studied political econom
y and Hegelian philosophy. As an adult, Marx became stateless and spent much of
his life in London, England, where he continued to develop his thought in collab
oration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and published various works, the mo
st well-known being the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. His work has sinc
e influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history.
Marx's theories about society, economics and politics collectively understood as M
arxism hold that human societies develop through class struggle: a conflict betwee
n ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production
and working classes (known as the proletariat) that work on these means by sell
ing their labour for wages. Through his theories of alienation, value, commodity
fetishism, and surplus value, Marx argued that capitalism facilitated social re
lations and ideology through commodification, inequality, and the exploitation o
f labour. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx pr
opounded the theory of base and superstructure, asserting that the cultural and
political conditions of society, as well as its notions of human nature, are lar
gely determined by obscured economic foundations. These economic critiques would
result in influential works such as Capital, Volume I (1867).
According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the ruling class but are n
onetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all.[7] He pr
edicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal
tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new syste
m: socialism. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its
instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class' develop
ment of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and ev
entually the establishment of a classless, communist society governed by a free
association of producers.[8][9] Marx actively fought for its implementation, arg
uing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to t
opple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.[10]
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history,
and his work has been both lauded and criticised.[11] His work in economics lai
d the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to
capital, and subsequent economic thought.[12][13][14][15] Many intellectuals, la
bour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Mar
x's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as
one of the principal architects of modern sociology[16] and social science.[17]
Contents
1 Life
1.1 Childhood and early education: 1818 1835
1.2 Hegelianism and early activism: 1836 1843
1.3 Paris: 1843 1845
1.4 Brussels: 1845 1848
1.5 Cologne: 1848 1849
1.6 Move to London and further writing: 1850 1860
1.7 New York Tribune and journalism
1.8 The First International and Capital
2 Personal life
2.1 Family
2.2 Health
2.3 Death
3 Thought
3.1 Influences
3.2 Philosophy and social thought

3.2.1 Human nature


3.2.2 Labour, class struggle, and false consciousness
3.2.3 Economy, history, and society
4
5
6
7
8

Legacy
Selected bibliography
See also
Notes
References
8.1 Bibliography
9 Further reading
9.1 Biographies
9.2 Commentaries on Marx
9.3 Medical articles
10 External links
10.1 Articles and entries
Life
Childhood and early education: 1818 1835
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henrietta Pressburg (1788 18
63). He was born at 664 Brckergasse in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of
Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine.[18] Marx was ancestrally Jewish; his mate
rnal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's
rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx.[19] Karl'
s father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a s
ecular education; he became a lawyer and lived a relatively wealthy and middle-c
lass existence, with his family owning a number of Moselle vineyards. Prior to h
is son's birth, and to escape the constraints of anti-semitic legislation, Hersc
hel converted from Judaism to Lutheranism, the main Protestant denomination in G
ermany and Prussia at the time, taking on the German forename of Heinrich over t
he Yiddish Herschel.[20]
Marx's birthplace in Trier. It was purchased by the Social Democratic Party of G
ermany in 1928 and now houses a museum devoted to him.[21]
Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in th
e ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he
took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed
by an absolute monarchy.[22] In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in
1819 moving his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra.[23] His wif
e, a Dutch Jewish woman, Henrietta Pressburg, was semi-literate and was said to
suffer from "excessive mother love", devoting much time to her family and insist
ing on cleanliness within her home.[24] She was from a prosperous business famil
y that later founded the company Philips Electronics: she was great-aunt to Anto
n and Gerard Philips, and great-great-aunt to Frits Philips. Her sister Sophie P
resburg (1797 1854), was Marx's aunt and was married to Lion Philips (1794 1866) Mar
x's uncle through this marriage, and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anto
n Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industriali
st, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while
they were exiled in London.[25] In contrast to her husband, Henrietta retained
her Jewish faith.[26]
Little is known of Karl Marx's childhood.[27] The third of nine children, he bec
ame the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819.[28] Young Karl was bapt
ised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824. His surviving siblings, Sophie, He
rmann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie and Karoline, were also baptised as Lutherans.[
29] Young Karl was privately educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, when he ent
ered Trier High School, whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his f
ather. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the
anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the scho
ol in 1832, and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was be

ing distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such materia
l a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff
during Marx's attendance.[30]
In October 1835 at the age of 17, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishi
ng to study philosophy and literature; however, his father insisted on law as a
more practical field.[31] Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest",[32]
Karl was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University a
t Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that
were monitored by the police.[33] Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinkin
g society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner), at one point serving as club co-pres
ident.[34] Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which be
came serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the univers
ity's Borussian Korps.[35] Although his grades in the first term were good, they
soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious a
nd academic University of Berlin.[36]
Hegelianism and early activism: 1836 1843
Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his stu
dies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated barone
ss of the Prussian ruling class who had known Marx since childhood. Having broke
n off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship
was socially controversial due to the differences between their religious and c
lass origins, but Marx befriended her father, a liberal aristocrat, Ludwig von W
estphalen, and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him.[37] Seven years after
their engagement, on 19 June 1843, Marx married Jenny in a Protestant church in
Kreuznach.[38]
In October 1836 Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's facult
y of law and renting a room in the Mittelstrasse.[39] Although studying law, he
was fascinated by philosophy, and looked for a way to combine the two, believing
that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished".[40] Marx became intere
sted in the recently deceased German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose ideas wer
e then widely debated among European philosophical circles.[41] During a convale
scence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club (Doktorklub), a student group whi
ch discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with a group of ra
dical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837; they gathered around Ludwig
Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a particularly close friendship
with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's m
etaphysical assumptions, but adopted his dialectical method in order to criticis
e established society, politics, and religion from a leftist perspective.[42] Ma
rx's father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family.[4
3] Marx had been emotionally close to his father, and treasured his memory after
his death.[44]
Jenny von Westphalen in the 1830s
By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short
novel, Scorpion and Felix, a drama, Oulanem, and a number of love poems dedicat
ed to Jenny von Westphalen, though none of this early work was published during
his lifetime.[45] Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the
study of both English and Italian, art history and the translation of Latin clas
sics.[46] He began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy o
f Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Di
fference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,[47] which h
e completed in 1841. It was described as "a daring and original piece of work in
which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of p
hilosophy":[48] The essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative
professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided, instead, to submit his th
esis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his PhD i
n April 1841.[49] As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March 1841 they began

plans for a journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), but it
never came to fruition. In July, Marx and Bauer took a trip to Bonn from Berlin.
There they scandalised their class by getting drunk, laughing in church, and ga
lloping through the streets on donkeys.[50]
Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the governm
ent's growing opposition to classical liberalism and the Young Hegelians.[51] Ma
rx moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radic
al newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhineland News"), expressing his early views o
n socialism and his developing interest in economics. He criticised both right-w
ing European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movemen
ts whom he thought ineffective or counter-productive.[52] The newspaper attracte
d the attention of the Prussian government censors, who checked every issue for
seditious material before printing; Marx lamented that "Our newspaper has to be
presented to the police to be sniffed at, and if the police nose smells anything
un-Christian or un-Prussian, the newspaper is not allowed to appear."[53] After
the Rheinische Zeitung published an article strongly criticising the Russian mo
narchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned; Prussia's government complied in
1843.[54]
Paris: 1843 1845
In 1843, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical leftist Parisian newspaper, the
Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher (German-French Annals), then being set up by the Ge
rman socialist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals,[55] and
thus Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ru
ge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, they found the living conditions di
fficult, so moved out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844.[56] A
lthough intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the
Jahrbcher was dominated by the latter; the only non-German writer was the exiled
Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin.[57] Marx contributed two essays
to the paper, "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philoso
phy of Right"[58] and "On the Jewish Question,"[59] the latter introducing his b
elief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of
communism.[60] Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful,
largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig
of Bavaria, leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies; Ruge
nevertheless refused to fund the publication of further issues, and his friends
hip with Marx broke down.[61] After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for
the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, Vorwrts! (Forward!).
Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just, a utopian so
cialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meet
ings, but did not join.[62] In Vorwrts!, Marx refined his views on socialism base
d upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, at the same t
ime criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.[63]
Friedrich Engels, whom Marx met in 1844; they became lifelong friends and collab
orators.
On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Caf de l
a Rgence, beginning a lifelong friendship.[64] Engels showed Marx his recently pu
blished The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844,[65][66] convincin
g Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final rev
olution in history.[4][67] Soon Marx and Engels were collaborating on a criticis
m of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer. This work was
published in 1845 as The Holy Family.[68][69] Although critical of Bauer, Marx
was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the Young Hegelians Max Stirner and
Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually Marx and Engels abandoned Feuerbachian material
ism as well.[70]
During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vanneau in Paris (from October 1843 unti
l January 1845),[71] Marx engaged in an intensive study of "political economy" (

Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill etc.[72]), the French socialists (especial
ly Claude Henri St. Simon and Charles Fourier)[73] and the history of France."[7
4] The study of political economy is a study that Marx would pursue for the rest
of his life[75] and would result in his major economic work the three-volume seri
es called Capital.[76] Marxism is based in large part on three influences: Hegel
's dialectics, French utopian socialism and English economics. Together with his
earlier study of Hegel's dialectics, the studying that Marx did during this tim
e in Paris meant that all major components of "Marxism" (or political economy as
Marx called it) were in place by the autumn of 1844.[77] Although Marx was cons
tantly being pulled away from his study of political economy by the usual daily
demands on his time that everyone faces, and the additional special demands of e
diting a radical newspaper and later by the demands of organising and directing
the efforts of a political party during years in which popular uprisings of the
citizenry might at any moment become a revolution, Marx was always drawn back to
his economic studies. Marx sought "to understand the inner workings of capitali
sm

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi