Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, and socialist
. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The
Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital. Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
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Marx's critical theories about
society, economics, and politics, collectively understood as Marxism, hold that
human societies develop through class
conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in 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 labor-power in return for wages. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that those would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by 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' 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 the
working class should carry out organized proletarian
revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in
human history and his work has been both lauded and criticized. His work in economics laid the basis for some current theories about labor and its relation to capital. Many intellectuals, labor unions, artists, and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social
science.
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