Karl Marx, wage slave

Karl Marx appointed editor of the Rheinische Zeitung

Born in Prussian Trier in 1818 to Jewish parents who had converted to Protestantism so his lawyer father could advance his career, Karl Marx went on to study law, history and philosophy in Bonn and Berlin. Although the young Karl earned his doctorate, his prominence in radical circles meant that the Prussian government denied him the university career to which he aspired. Changing plans, Karl Marx accepted an offer of a position as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a newspaper founded by Cologne citizens to campaign for liberal reforms. Marx soon imposed a more radical editorial policy and came into conflict with the Prussian authorities, who dispatched a special censor from Berlin to monitor the publication. The Rheinische Zeitung was eventually banned and Karl Marx resigned.

Now unemployed, Karl Marx decided to marry, renounce his Prussian citizenship and leave for Paris, where he studied and published on politics and economics, together with his collaborator Friedrich Engels. Prussia felt that Marx was attacking its policy and demanded that the French government expel their erstwhile citizen. Marx fled to Brussels. He was later involved in the establishment of the Communist League and wrote the Communist Manifesto with its famous subheading, “Workers of the world, unite!” Marx returned to Cologne in March 1848 to assist the revolution that had broken out that year, and worked on a new publication, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, to advocate for democracy. Once the revolution had been supressed, France did not want to accept the stateless migrant, so he went into exile in London. Unable to support his family from his infrequent and meagre earnings as a journalist, Marx relied on the support of his wealthy friend Engels. Although his attempts to regain his Prussian citizenship were unsuccessful, Marx retained an interest in German radical politics and supported Karl Liebknecht’s Social Democratic Workers’ Party over other factions in the nascent workers’ movement. It was at this time that Marx wrote his major works, and the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867. Karl Marx, whose ideas had a major influence on German and world history, died in London in 1883 at the age of 64.