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130-444: The Marx–Engels Institute gathered unpublished manuscripts by Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Vladimir Lenin and other leading Marxist theoreticians as well as collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals related to the socialist and organized labor movements. By 1930, the facility's holdings included more than 400,000 books and journals and more than 55,000 original and photocopy documents by Marx and Engels alone, making it one of

260-498: A book which is often seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism , The German Ideology . In this work, Marx broke with Ludwig Feuerbach , Bruno Bauer , Max Stirner and the rest of the Young Hegelians, while he also broke with Karl Grün and other "true socialists" whose philosophies were still based in part on " idealism ". In German Ideology , Marx and Engels finally completed their philosophy, which

390-486: A child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education. He became a lawyer with a comfortably upper middle class income and the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards, in addition to his income as an attorney. Prior to his son's birth and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland , Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia , taking on

520-445: A crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type – collective production and appropriation". He added that "the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies". Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under

650-678: A criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer . This work was published in 1845 as The Holy Family . 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 materialism as well. During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vaneau in Paris (from October 1843 until January 1845), Marx engaged in an intensive study of political economy ( Adam Smith , David Ricardo , James Mill , etc. ) ,

780-530: A defence of the Commune. Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand and provide a critique suitable for the capitalist mode of production , and hence spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the British Museum studying. By 1857, Marx had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property , wage labour,

910-424: A diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father and treasured his memory after his death. By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short novel, Scorpion and Felix ; a drama, Oulanem ; as well as a number of love poems dedicated to his wife. None of this early work was published during his lifetime. The love poems were published posthumously in

1040-560: A group of radical 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 metaphysical assumptions but adopted his dialectical method to criticise established society, politics and religion from a left-wing perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in

1170-863: A handbill entitled the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany , in which he argued for only four of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto , believing that in Germany at that time the bourgeoisie must overthrow the feudal monarchy and aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie. On 1 June, Marx started the publication of a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his father. Designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist interpretation of events,

1300-606: A house or flat, apparently to make it harder for the authorities to track him down. While in Paris, he used that of "Monsieur Ramboz", whilst in London, he signed off his letters as "A. Williams". His friends referred to him as "Moor", owing to his dark complexion and black curly hair, while he encouraged his children to call him "Old Nick" and "Charley". He also bestowed nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family, referring to Friedrich Engels as "General", his housekeeper Helene as "Lenchen" or "Nym", while one of his daughters, Jennychen,

1430-412: 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 galloping through the streets on donkeys. Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the government's growing opposition to classical liberalism and

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1560-461: A new system known as the socialist mode of production . For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis -prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness , leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless , communist society constituted by a free association of producers . Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that

1690-582: A new, radical left-wing Parisian newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher ( German-French Annals ), then being set up by the German activist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals. Therefore Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau , they found the living conditions difficult, so moved out following

1820-952: A newspaper themselves, he and Engels turned to international journalism. At one stage they were being published by six newspapers from England, the United States, Prussia , Austria, and South Africa. Marx's principal earnings came from his work as European correspondent, from 1852 to 1862, for the New-York Daily Tribune , and from also producing articles for more "bourgeois" newspapers. Marx had his articles translated from German by Wilhelm Pieper  [ de ] , until his proficiency in English had become adequate. The New-York Daily Tribune had been founded in April 1841 by Horace Greeley . Its editorial board contained progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers, among them George Ripley and

1950-460: A preview of his three-volume Das Kapital (English title: Capital: Critique of Political Economy ), which he intended to publish at a later date. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , Marx began to critically examine axioms and categories of economic thinking. The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly. The successful sales of A Contribution to

2080-910: A request from the Prussian king, the French government shut down Vorwärts! , with the interior minister, François Guizot , expelling Marx from France. Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845. However, to stay in Belgium he had to pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics. In Brussels, Marx associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess , Karl Heinzen and Joseph Weydemeyer . In April 1845, Engels moved from Barmen in Germany to Brussels to join Marx and

2210-854: A resolution on the establishment of the Marx–Engels Institute, which in 1922, became an independent institution under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR (from April 1924—under Central Executive Committee of the USSR ). The institute assembled and maintained a research library devoted to socialist -related theme, amassing in a little over 10 years a collection of some 400,000 books, pamphlets, and journals, 15,000 manuscripts and 175,000 photocopies of original documents held elsewhere. Among these were 55,000 manuscripts by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels alone—far and away

2340-410: A revolution and change society. This was the intent of the new book that Marx was planning, but to get the manuscript past the government censors he called the book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and offered it as a response to the "petty-bourgeois philosophy" of the French anarchist socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as expressed in his book The Philosophy of Poverty (1840). These books laid

2470-566: A rival newspaper, the New York Sun , at which he was editor-in-chief. In April 1857, Dana invited Marx to contribute articles, mainly on military history, to the New American Cyclopedia , an idea of George Ripley, Dana's friend and literary editor of the Tribune . In all, 67 Marx-Engels articles were published, of which 51 were written by Engels, although Marx did some research for them in

2600-600: A ten-room property near the Porta Nigra . His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics . Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854) married Lion Philips (1794–1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips . Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little

2730-550: A text volume and accompanying apparatus volume containing Marx's ecological writings was published. The entire project is expected to be 114 volumes in total. The MEGA of today was not the first attempt to publish a complete collection of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their original language. In the 1920s and 1930s a first MEGA or MEGA began being published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow under

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2860-409: A time to join the socialist movement, the way a person must be persuaded to adopt any different belief, Marx knew that people would tend, on most occasions, to act in accordance with their own economic interests, thus appealing to an entire class (the working class in this case) with a broad appeal to the class's best material interest would be the best way to mobilise the broad mass of that class to make

2990-476: A transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin . Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen , an educated member of the petty nobility who had known Marx since childhood. As she had broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial owing to

3120-538: A way to combine the two, believing that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club ( Doktorklub ), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with

3250-605: A working-class revolution. After a long struggle that threatened to ruin the Communist League, Marx's opinion prevailed and eventually, the Willich/Schapper group left the Communist League. Meanwhile, Marx also became heavily involved with the socialist German Workers' Educational Society. The Society held their meetings in Great Windmill Street , Soho , central London's entertainment district. This organisation

3380-944: Is divided into four general sections: Since 1990 MEGA is being published by the Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (IMES) in Amsterdam. The IMES is an international network of the International Institute of Social History , the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW), the Karl-Marx-Haus (KMH) of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Trier , the Russian State Archive for Social/Political History (RGA) and

3510-590: Is known of Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church on 28 August 1824, and their mother in November 1825. Marx was privately educated by his father until 1830 when he entered Trier High School ( Gymnasium zu Trier  [ de ] ), whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach ,

3640-461: Is the history of class struggles". It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the Manifesto presents the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal political parties and groups at

3770-464: Is the largest collection of the writing of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in any language. It is an ongoing project intended to produce a critical edition of the complete works of Marx and Engels that reproduces the extant writings of both authors in books of high-quality paper and library binding . Being a scholarly and academic, historical-critical ( historisch-kritische ) edition, most MEGA volumes consist of separate text and appendix books,

3900-726: The British Museum . By the late 1850s, American popular interest in European affairs waned and Marx's articles turned to topics such as the "slavery crisis" and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 in the "War Between the States". Between December 1851 and March 1852, Marx worked on his theoretical work about the French Revolution of 1848 , titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon . In this he explored concepts in historical materialism , class struggle , dictatorship of

4030-575: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1923 to gather manuscripts with a view to publication of a scholarly edition of Vladimir Lenin 's collected works. This work was accomplished through the publication of a thick periodical called Leninskii sbornik ( Lenin Miscellany ), some 25 numbers of which were published between 1924 and 1933. The institute eventually became under

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4160-590: The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 1 . Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the study of both English and Italian, art history and the translation of Latin classics. He began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature , which he completed in 1841. It

4290-550: The Communist League , and in 1848 they wrote The Communist Manifesto , which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital . From 1864, Marx was involved in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he fought

4420-694: The Kingdom of Prussia , Marx studied at the universities of Bonn , Berlin , and Jena , and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian , he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, who became his closest friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in

4550-479: The Manuscripts had been influenced by some inconsistent ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Accordingly, Marx recognised the need to break with Feuerbach's philosophy in favour of historical materialism, thus a year later (in April 1845) after moving from Paris to Brussels, Marx wrote his eleven " Theses on Feuerbach ". The "Theses on Feuerbach" are best known for Thesis 11, which states that "philosophers have only interpreted

4680-673: The Menshevik Trial in February 1931, economist Isaak Rubin —a former employee of the Marx–Engels Institute—implicated the head of the institute David Riazanov as part of the conspiracy, with Riazanov accused of having hidden Menshevik documents in the facility. Although modern scholars consider the accusation in the February show trial to have been extremely dubious, Riazanov was nevertheless arrested and sent into exile outside of Moscow. A purge of Marx–Engels Institute staff deemed to be ideologically suspicious followed. In

4810-725: The Russian Independent Institute for the Study of Social and National Problems (RNI), the latter two in Moscow. The main task of the IMES is to continue the publication of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe . In 2015 the Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz (federal science conference) of the German federal states and the German national government decided to continue funding the publication of MEGA , albeit in

4940-549: The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China . Theoretical variants such as Leninism , Marxism–Leninism , Trotskyism , and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has had a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and capital , and he is often cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science . Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg . He

5070-486: The Tribune discharged all its correspondents in Europe except Marx and B. Taylor, and reduced Marx to a weekly article. Between September and November 1860, only five were published. After a six-month interval, Marx resumed contributions from September 1861 until March 1862, when Dana wrote to inform him that there was no longer space in the Tribune for reports from London, due to American domestic affairs. In 1868, Dana set up

5200-615: The fall of the Soviet Union , with the institute's library and archive transferred to a new entity called the Russian Independent Institute for Social and National Problems. The Central Party Archive of the institute was placed under the control of the Russian Ministry of Culture and eventually emerged as the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). Karl Marx Karl Marx ( German: [kaʁl ˈmaʁks] ; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883)

5330-717: The 1970s onwards, it also participated with foreign partners in the publication of the English-language Marx/Engels Collected Works (50 volumes) and the second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe . The name "Institute of Marxism–Leninism" remained unaltered for nearly 35 years until turmoil in the Soviet Union brought about a name change to Institute of the Theory and History of Socialism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт теории и истории социализма ЦК КПСС ). The institute formally ceased to exist in November 1991 following

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5460-529: The Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each time he was acquitted. Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed and the king, Frederick William IV , introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters, who implemented counterrevolutionary measures to expunge left-wing and other revolutionary elements from

5590-581: The Collected Works' thirty-fourth volume consists of the surviving fragments of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1864 , which represented a third draft for Das Kapital , and a large portion of which is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Das Kapital , volume I. A German-language abridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published in 1905 and in 1910. This abridged edition

5720-603: The Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and in 1863 was forced to withdraw as a writer for the Tribune . In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Although Marx won this contest,

5850-496: The Critique of Political Economy stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work – Das Kapital and the Theories of Surplus Value , which discussed and critiqued the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo . Theories of Surplus Value is often referred to as the fourth volume of Das Kapital and constitutes one of

5980-497: The French socialists (especially Claude Henri St. Simon and Charles Fourier ) and the history of France. The study of, and critique, of political economy is a project that Marx would pursue for the rest of his life and would result in his major economic work—the three-volume series called Das Kapital . Marxism is based in large part on three influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism and British political economy. Together with his earlier study of Hegel's dialectics,

6110-581: The German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment , interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire . A classical liberal , he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy . In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to

6240-475: The Gotha Programme opposed the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to compromise with the state socialist ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle in the interests of a united socialist party. This work is also notable for another famous Marx quote: " From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ". In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated

6370-703: The History of the Communist Party . In 1928, Istpart was dissolved and its functions fully absorbed by the Lenin Institute. The Lenin Institute was a slightly larger entity than the Marx–Engels Institute, with a staff of 158 in 1929, but it did not share the reputation for impartial scholarship enjoyed by the older research library and scholarly think tank. The Lenin Institute was initially headed by Lev Kamenev , followed by Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov and after his death in 1928 by Maximilian Saveliev . In February 1931 as part of

6500-462: The Jewish Question ", the latter introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of communism. 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

6630-421: The Mittelstrasse. During the first term, Marx attended lectures of Eduard Gans (who represented the progressive Hegelian standpoint, elaborated on rational development in history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the importance of social question) and of Karl von Savigny (who represented the Historical School of Law ). Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy and looked for

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6760-450: The Trier Tavern Club drinking society ( German : Landsmannschaft der Treveraner ) where many ideas were discussed and at one point he served as the club's co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps . Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force

6890-429: The Young Hegelians. Marx moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ( Rhineland News ), expressing his early views on socialism and his developing interest in economics. Marx criticised right-wing European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movements, whom he thought ineffective or counter-productive. The newspaper attracted

7020-419: The age of 16, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx also joined

7150-706: The anticipated multi-volume works of Marx and Engels was started at this time (1927/28) in the form of two editions: an untranslated, complete edition (the first Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe ), which was to comprise 42 volumes (12 of which were published until 1935 – then this project was discontinued), and a first Russian edition in 28 volumes ( Sochineniya ), the 33 bound books of which were completely published by 1947. The institute also published two regular academic journals, Arkhiv Karla Marksa i Friderikha Engel'sa ( Archive of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ) and Letopis' marksizma ( Marxist Chronicle ). The Lenin Institute began as an independent archival project, established by

7280-534: The attention of the Prussian government censors , who checked every issue for seditious material before printing, which Marx lamented: "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". After the Rheinische Zeitung published an article strongly criticising the Russian monarchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned and Prussia's government complied in 1843. In 1843, Marx became co-editor of

7410-401: The birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the Jahrbücher was dominated by the latter and the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin . Marx contributed two essays to the paper, " Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right " and " On

7540-619: The citizenry. Still, Marx was always drawn back to his studies where he sought "to understand the inner workings of capitalism". An outline of "Marxism" had definitely formed in the mind of Karl Marx by late 1844. Indeed, many features of the Marxist view of the world had been worked out in great detail, but Marx needed to write down all of the details of his world view to further clarify the new critique of political economy in his own mind. Accordingly, Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts . These manuscripts covered numerous topics, detailing Marx's concept of alienated labour . By

7670-577: The city for the rest of his life. The headquarters of the Communist League also moved to London. However, in the winter of 1849–1850, a split within the ranks of the Communist League occurred when a faction within it led by August Willich and Karl Schapper began agitating for an immediate uprising. Willich and Schapper believed that once the Communist League had initiated the uprising, the entire working class from across Europe would rise "spontaneously" to join it, thus creating revolution across Europe. Marx and Engels protested that such an unplanned uprising on

7800-463: The conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie ) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat ) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by

7930-432: The coordinating authority for the systematic organization of documents released in the multi-volume editions of the Collected Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and numerous other official publications. It was officially terminated in November 1991, with the bulk of its archival holdings now residing with a successor organization, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). The Marx–Engels Institute

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8060-568: The country. Consequently, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was soon suppressed, and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May 1849. Marx returned to Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counterrevolution and a cholera epidemic, and was soon expelled by the city authorities, who considered him a political threat. With his wife Jenny expecting their fourth child and with Marx not able to move back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London. Marx moved to London in early June 1849 and would remain based in

8190-402: The deleterious influences which are assailing it [the rural commune] from all sides". Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that "normal conditions of spontaneous development" of the rural commune could exist. However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich he points out that "at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from

8320-418: The development of their theory of economics and historical progression. After the "failures" of 1848, the revolutionary impetus appeared spent and not to be renewed without an economic recession. Contention arose between Marx and his fellow communists, whom he denounced as "adventurists". Marx deemed it fanciful to propose that "will power" could be sufficient to create the revolutionary conditions when in reality

8450-405: The differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father Ludwig von Westphalen (a liberal aristocrat) and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, they married in a Protestant church in Kreuznach . In October 1836, Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty of law and renting a room in

8580-405: The direction of David Riazanov , a Marxist scholar and revolutionary. MEGA was originally intended to comprise 42 volumes, of which 12 volumes were published between 1927 and 1935. After Riazanov who edited the first five volumes of MEGA was removed as director of the Marx-Engels Institute in February 1931, Vladimir Adoratsky took his place as editor and published the next seven volumes. By

8710-406: The early period in London, Marx committed himself almost exclusively to his studies, such that his family endured extreme poverty. His main source of income was Engels, whose own source was his wealthy industrialist father. In Prussia as editor of his own newspaper, and contributor to others ideologically aligned, Marx could reach his audience, the working classes. In London, without finances to run

8840-435: The economic component was the necessary requisite. The recession in the United States' economy in 1852 gave Marx and Engels grounds for optimism for revolutionary activity, yet this economy was seen as too immature for a capitalist revolution. Open territories on America's western frontier dissipated the forces of social unrest. Moreover, any economic crisis arising in the United States would not lead to revolutionary contagion of

8970-476: The effects of which led to his being exempted from Prussian military service. In later life whilst working on Das Kapital (which he never completed), Marx suffered from a trio of afflictions. A liver ailment, probably hereditary, was aggravated by overwork, a bad diet, and lack of sleep. Inflammation of the eyes was induced by too much work at night. A third affliction, eruption of carbuncles or boils, "was probably brought on by general physical debility to which

9100-442: The efforts and will power of a handful of men. They are instead brought about through a scientific analysis of economic conditions of society and by moving toward revolution through different stages of social development. In the present stage of development ( circa 1850), following the defeat of the uprisings across Europe in 1848 he felt that the Communist League should encourage the working class to unite with progressive elements of

9230-421: The fall of the Berlin Wall , publishing of MEGA was transferred to the Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (IMES) in Amsterdam . The volumes are printed and bound by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin . The project is presently being overseen by Gerald Hubmann. Sixty-five volumes of MEGA have been published so far. All volumes containing writings related to Das Kapital have been published. Most recently

9360-409: The first comprehensive treatises on the history of economic thought . In 1867, the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which critically analysed capital. Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the mode of production from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, with topics such as the growth of wage labour ,

9490-565: The foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as The Communist Manifesto . While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the secret radical organisation League of the Just . As noted above, Marx thought the League to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward

9620-552: The growing cadre of members of the League of the Just now seeking home in Brussels. Later, Mary Burns , Engels' long-time companion, left Manchester, England to join Engels in Brussels. In mid-July 1845, Marx and Engels left Brussels for England to visit the leaders of the Chartists , a working-class movement in Britain. This was Marx's first trip to England and Engels was an ideal guide for

9750-482: The history of the countries of Southern Europe and the history of international relations . Also included were sections working in philosophy, economics, political science and the history of socialism in Slavic countries. The main research orientation of the facility was towards history rather than other social sciences. By 1930, of the 109 employed by the Marx–Engels Institute, fully 87 were historians. While working under

9880-489: The influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin . In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery . Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict . In the capitalist mode of production , this manifests itself in

10010-409: The journalist Charles Dana , who was editor-in-chief. Dana, a fourierist and an abolitionist , was Marx's contact. The Tribune was a vehicle for Marx to reach a transatlantic public, such as for his "hidden warfare" against Henry Charles Carey . The journal had wide working-class appeal from its foundation; at two cents, it was inexpensive; and, with about 50,000 copies per issue, its circulation

10140-597: The jurisdiction of the Central Committee as a department. The mission of the Lenin Institute was expanded in 1924 by the 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party to include the "study and dissemination of Leninism among the broad masses within and outside the party", namely an enlarged purview which rendered obsolete the previously existing Commission on the History of the October Revolution and

10270-551: The largest holdings of socialist-related material in the world. In February 1931, director of the Marx–Engels Institute David Riazanov and others on the staff were purged for ideological reasons. In November of that same year, the Marx–Engels Institute was merged with the larger and less scholarly Lenin Institute (established in 1923) to form the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute. The institute was

10400-831: The latter giving additional information on the edited text. All material in MEGA is edited in the original language, resulting in mostly German- but also a considerable quantity of English- as well as French-language texts. Initiated by the Institutes of Marxism–Leninism of the SED in Berlin and the CPSU in Moscow and published by Dietz Verlag (Berlin) as a series launched in 1975, MEGA contains all works published by Marx and Engels in their lifetimes and numerous previously unpublished manuscripts and letters. After

10530-432: The latter spanning volumes 30–34 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels . Specifically, Theories of Surplus Value runs from the latter part of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the end of their thirty-second volume; meanwhile, the larger Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 run from the start of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the first half of their thirty-fourth volume. The latter half of

10660-501: The mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its "secret" or "underground" orientation and operate in the open as a political party. Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June 1847 the League was reorganised by its membership into a new open "above ground" political society that appealed directly to

10790-425: The means of production". In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past. He wrote that "the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak,

10920-499: The mid 1930s, MEGA was silently discontinued. A second attempt undertaken in the 1960s and continued to this day. The cooperation between German and Soviet editors, new editorial guidelines and innovative concepts led to the publication of a first sample volume in 1972, followed by the first volume of the new, second MEGA (or MEGA ) in 1975. MEGA contains material written by Marx between 1835 and his death in 1883, and by Engels between 1838 and his death in 1895. The project

11050-464: The name changed to Institute of Marxism–Leninism of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт марксизма-ленинизма при ЦК КПСС ). During this period, beginning in the 1950s, the institute was involved in the realization of major projects such as the publication of a second Russian edition of the collected works of Marx and Engels ( Sochineniya with 39 basic and 11 supplementary volumes) and the comprehensive fifth edition of Lenin's Collected Works (55 volumes). From

11180-441: The newspaper featured Marx as a primary writer and the dominant editorial influence. Despite contributions by fellow members of the Communist League, according to Friedrich Engels it remained "a simple dictatorship by Marx". Whilst editor of the paper, Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were regularly harassed by the police and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions, facing various allegations including insulting

11310-470: The older economies of individual European nations, which were closed systems bounded by their national borders. When the so-called Panic of 1857 in the United States spread globally, it broke all economic theory models, and was the first truly global economic crisis. Marx continued to write articles for the New York Daily Tribune as long as he was sure that the Tribune ' s editorial policy

11440-470: The part of the Communist League was "adventuristic" and would be suicide for the Communist League. Such an uprising as that recommended by the Schapper/Willich group would easily be crushed by the police and the armed forces of the reactionary governments of Europe. Marx maintained that this would spell doom for the Communist League itself, arguing that changes in society are not achieved overnight through

11570-513: The possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir . While admitting that Russia's rural "commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia", Marx also warned that in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage it "would first be necessary to eliminate

11700-578: The printing of 3,000 copies of the book in the Russian language, which was published on 27 March 1872. By the autumn of 1871, the entire first edition of the German-language edition of Das Kapital had been sold out and a second edition was published. Volumes II and III of Das Kapital remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life. Both volumes were published by Engels after Marx's death. Volume II of Das Kapital

11830-491: The proletariat , and victory of the proletariat over the bourgeois state. The 1850s and 1860s may be said to mark a philosophical boundary distinguishing the young Marx 's Hegelian idealism and the more mature Marx 's scientific ideology associated with structural Marxism . However, not all scholars accept this distinction. For Marx and Engels, their experience of the Revolutions of 1848 to 1849 were formative in

11960-584: The publication of further issues and his friendship with Marx broke down). After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, Vorwärts! ( Forward! ). Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just , a utopian socialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings but did not join. In Vorwärts! , Marx refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism , at

12090-401: The rising bourgeoisie to defeat the feudal aristocracy on issues involving demands for governmental reforms, such as a constitutional republic with freely elected assemblies and universal (male) suffrage. In other words, the working class must join with bourgeois and democratic forces to bring about the successful conclusion of the bourgeois revolution before stressing the working-class agenda and

12220-619: The same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe. On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence , beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 , convincing Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history. Soon, Marx and Engels were collaborating on

12350-505: The single most important accumulation of such material. The institute included an academic staff which engaged in research on historical and topical themes of interest to the regime. The institute included sections devoted to the history of the First and Second Internationals , the history of Germany , the history of France , the history of Great Britain , the history of the United States ,

12480-426: The spring of 1845, his continued study of political economy, capital and capitalism had led Marx to the belief that the new critique of political economy he was espousing—that of scientific socialism —needed to be built on the base of a thoroughly developed materialistic view of the world. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 had been written between April and August 1844, but soon Marx recognised that

12610-400: The state, and foreign trade, and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939, under the title Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (English: Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy ). In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as

12740-443: The studying that Marx did during this time in Paris meant that all major components of "Marxism" were in place by the autumn of 1844. Marx was constantly being pulled away from his critique of political economy—not only by the usual daily demands of the time, but additionally by editing a radical newspaper and later by organising and directing the efforts of a political party during years of potentially revolutionary popular uprisings of

12870-466: The time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism. Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals that became known as the Revolutions of 1848 . In France, a revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second Republic . Marx

13000-684: The title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State . Marx and von Westphalen had seven children together, but partly owing to the poor conditions in which they lived whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood. Their children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–1852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). According to his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue , Marx

13130-648: The transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, " The Civil War in France ",

13260-449: The transformation of the workplace, capital accumulation , competition, the banking system, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and land-rents, as well as how waged labour continually reproduce the rule of capital. Marx proposes that the driving force of capital is in the exploitation of labour , whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value . Demand for a Russian language edition of Das Kapital soon led to

13390-580: The trip. Engels had already spent two years living in Manchester from November 1842 to August 1844. Not only did Engels already know the English language, but he had also developed a close relationship with many Chartist leaders. Indeed, Engels was serving as a reporter for many Chartist and socialist English newspapers. Marx used the trip as an opportunity to examine the economic resources available for study in various libraries in London and Manchester. In collaboration with Engels, Marx also set about writing

13520-496: The various features of Marx's style of life – alcohol, tobacco, poor diet, and failure to sleep – all contributed. Engels often exhorted Marx to alter this dangerous regime". In Seigel's thesis, what lay behind this punishing sacrifice of his health may have been guilt about self-involvement and egoism, originally induced in Karl Marx by his father. Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe ( MEGA )

13650-399: The wake of the ideological purges of the Marx–Engels Institute in November 1931, it was merged with the larger Lenin Institute to form the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute under the direction of Vladimir Adoratsky . The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute was subsequently renamed multiple times. In 1952, the facility's formal attachment to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

13780-505: The watchful eyes of the All-Union Communist Party (b) , the Marx–Engels Institute was not a one-party affair in its formative decade, with just 39 of its staff members also members of the Communist Party in 1930. During its first decade, the institute published an array of books by the likes of Georgi Plekhanov , Karl Kautsky , Franz Mehring , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , David Ricardo and Adam Smith . The publication of

13910-520: The working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation . Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures of the modern era , and his work has been both lauded and criticised . Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including

14040-453: The working classes. This new open political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League . In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League . Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto

14170-473: The world in various ways, the point is to change it". This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory), and, overall, philosophy (for putting abstract reality above the physical world). It thus introduced the first glimpse at Marx's historical materialism , an argument that the world is changed not by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice. In 1845, after receiving

14300-621: Was a German-born philosopher , political theorist, economist , historian, sociologist , journalist, and revolutionary socialist . His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels ) and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism , in the culmination of his intellectual endeavours. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism , have had enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history. Born in Trier in

14430-470: Was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance. In October 1835 at

14560-526: Was a loving father. In 1962, there were allegations that Marx fathered a son, Freddy, out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth , but the claim is disputed for lack of documented evidence. Helene Demuth was also largely entrusted as a confidante. In her obituary, penned by Friedrich Engels , her role is revealed as: "Marx took counsel of Helena Demuth, not only in difficult and intricate party matters, but even in respect of his economical writings". Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting

14690-522: Was also racked by an internal struggle between its members, some of whom followed Marx while others followed the Schapper/Willich faction. The issues in this internal split were the same issues raised in the internal split within the Communist League, but Marx lost the fight with the Schapper/Willich faction within the German Workers' Educational Society and on 17 September 1850 resigned from the Society. In

14820-399: Was based solely on materialism as the sole motor force in history. German Ideology is written in a humorously satirical form, but even this satirical form did not save the work from censorship. Like so many other early writings of his, German Ideology would not be published in Marx's lifetime and was published only in 1932. After completing German Ideology , Marx turned to a work that

14950-474: Was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier , an ancient city then part of the Kingdom of Prussia 's Province of the Lower Rhine . Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted formally to Christianity before his birth. His maternal 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. His father, as

15080-567: 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 philosophy". The essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided instead to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena , whose faculty awarded him his Ph.D. in April 1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists , in March 1841 they began plans for

15210-578: Was established in 1919 by the government of Soviet Russia as a branch of the Communist Academy , intended as an academic research facility to conduct historical studies and to collect documents deemed relevant to the new socialist regime. The first director of the facility, located in Moscow , was David Riazanov . On January 11, 1921, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) adopted

15340-425: Was first published on 21 February 1848. The Communist Manifesto laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism: "The history of all hitherto existing society

15470-423: Was forced to flee back to France, where with a new republican government in power he believed that he would be safe. Temporarily settling down in Paris, Marx transferred the Communist League executive headquarters to the city and also set up a German Workers' Club with various German socialists living there. Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848 Marx moved back to Cologne where he began issuing

15600-534: Was formally noted with the expanded moniker Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute of the CC CPSU (Russian: Институт Маркса—Энгельса—Ленина при ЦК КПСС ). The name of deceased Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was added in 1953, with the institute formally becoming the Marx–Engels–Lenin–Stalin Institute of the CC CPSU. This remained in place until the onset of de-Stalinization following the so-called Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. At this point,

15730-400: Was intended to clarify his own position regarding "the theory and tactics" of a truly "revolutionary proletarian movement" operating from the standpoint of a truly "scientific materialist" philosophy. This work was intended to draw a distinction between the utopian socialists and Marx's own scientific socialist philosophy. Whereas the utopians believed that people must be persuaded one person at

15860-590: Was never afterward free, exacerbated by an unsuitable lifestyle. The attacks often came with headaches, eye inflammation, neuralgia in the head, and rheumatic pains. A serious nervous disorder appeared in 1877 and protracted insomnia was a consequence, which Marx fought with narcotics. The illness was aggravated by excessive nocturnal work and faulty diet. Marx was fond of highly seasoned dishes, smoked fish, caviare, pickled cucumbers, "none of which are good for liver patients", but he also liked wine and liqueurs and smoked an enormous amount "and since he had no money, it

15990-450: Was prepared and published by Engels in July 1893 under the name Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital . Volume III of Das Kapital was published a year later in October 1894 under the name Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole . Theories of Surplus Value derived from the sprawling Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 , a second draft for Das Kapital ,

16120-631: Was referred to as "Qui Qui, Emperor of China " and another, Laura, was known as " Kakadou " or "the Hottentot ". Marx drank heavily after joining the Trier Tavern Club drinking society in the 1830s, and continued to do so until his death. Marx was afflicted by poor health, what he himself described as "the wretchedness of existence", and various authors have sought to describe and explain it. His biographer Werner Blumenberg attributed it to liver and gall problems which Marx had in 1849 and from which he

16250-416: Was sometimes too mistrustful and unjust even to them. His verdicts, not only about enemies but even about friends, were sometimes so harsh that even less sensitive people would take offence ... There must have been few whom he did not criticize like this ... not even Engels was an exception. According to Princeton historian Jerrold Seigel , in his late teens, Marx may have had pneumonia or pleurisy,

16380-593: Was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy. No longer was the Tribune to be a strong abolitionist paper dedicated to a complete Union victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in

16510-508: Was supportive of such activity and having recently received a substantial inheritance from his father (withheld by his uncle Lionel Philips since his father's death in 1838) of either 6,000 or 5,000 francs he allegedly used a third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action. Although the veracity of these allegations is disputed, the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused Marx of it, subsequently arresting him and he

16640-539: Was the widest in the United States. Its editorial ethos was progressive and its anti-slavery stance reflected Greeley's. Marx's first article for the paper, on the British parliamentary elections, was published on 21 August 1852. On 21 March 1857, Dana informed Marx that due to the economic recession only one article a week would be paid for, published or not; the others would be paid for only if published. Marx had sent his articles on Tuesdays and Fridays, but, that October,

16770-485: Was translated into English and published in 1951 in London, but the complete unabridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published as the "fourth volume" of Das Kapital in 1963 and 1971 in Moscow. During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined, and he became incapable of the sustained effort that had characterised his previous work. He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His Critique of

16900-586: Was usually bad-quality cigars". From 1863, Marx complained a lot about boils: "These are very frequent with liver patients and may be due to the same causes". The abscesses were so bad that Marx could neither sit nor work upright. According to Blumenberg, Marx's irritability is often found in liver patients: The illness emphasised certain traits in his character. He argued cuttingly, his biting satire did not shrink at insults, and his expressions could be rude and cruel. Though in general Marx had blind faith in his closest friends, nevertheless he himself complained that he

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