Karl Marx
Marxist · Europe · 1818 to 1883
German thinker who argued that material conditions and class struggle shape history and ideas. He called for a society without exploitation.
What it is
Karl Marx (1818 to 1883) was a German philosopher, economist and revolutionary who explained society and history through economic life and class conflict, criticised capitalism as a system of exploitation and alienation, and expected it to be replaced by a classless society. He is often thought of as an activist, but he was trained academically as a philosopher, with a doctorate in ancient philosophy, and his writings contain many ideas that philosophers still discuss.
He was born in Trier, then part of Prussia, and he died in London. With his friend Friedrich Engels he wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. His main study of the capitalist economy is Das Kapital, which appeared in three volumes between 1867 and 1894. The body of ideas that grew out of his work is known as Marxism.
The main ideas
- Alienation. Marx's early writings are dominated by the idea that people can be cut off from their own powers and from what makes them human, and that the way work is organised under capitalism does this to workers. He treated it as a social ill whose diagnosis depends on a view of what human flourishing is.
- A theory of history. Often called historical materialism. Forms of society rise and fall according to whether they help or hold back the growth of a society's ability to produce what it needs.
- How capitalism works. Capitalism is driven by a constant search for profit, which Marx traced to surplus value: the part of a worker's labour that the employer keeps without paying for it. This is what he called the exploitation of the working class, the proletariat.
- Class conflict. Class struggle is the engine of social change under capitalism.
- Ideology. Widely held beliefs that suit those in power can help explain why class-divided societies stay stable.
- Communism. Marx predicted that capitalism would be replaced by communism, a society without classes.
What it looks like in practice
Picture someone reading a news story about a factory closing. A Marxist question asks who owns the factory and who does the work, what each gains from keeping it open or closing it, and how the way the economy is organised shapes the laws, the politics and even the opinions people have about it. The method is to look first at who produces what, and for whom, before looking at the speeches.
Books and moments
- The Communist Manifesto (1848), written with Friedrich Engels.
- Das Kapital (1867 to 1894) is his long study of the capitalist mode of production.
- His doctorate was in philosophy, and he engaged directly with Hegel and other philosophers of his time.
Questions and criticism
- Did Marx think capitalism was unjust? The role of morality in his criticism is much discussed, and there is no settled scholarly view.
- Philosopher or activist? He is often treated as a revolutionary rather than a philosopher. Scholars who stress his training argue that his philosophical side is easily overlooked.
- Is the theory of history testable? It is fair to ask what evidence would count for or against a theory that explains all of history through economic life.
Close neighbours
Marx took over parts of Hegel's account of history and turned it into a materialist one. The New World Encyclopedia also names Feuerbach, the British economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and French socialist writers among his sources. The page on Marxism describes the tradition that followed him.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Where to start reading
Books by Karl Marx or about them, from the easiest way in to the harder ones.
Covers belong to their publishers and are shown so you can recognise the book.
Philosophies they belong to or are close to
Who they connect to
Influenced
- Alasdair MacIntyre · MacIntyre was a Marxist in his early career and kept parts of the critique of capitalism.
- Antonio Gramsci · He reworked Marx's thought around culture, ideas and the winning of consent.
- Enrique Dussel · Dussel wrote extensively on Marx and used him in his philosophy of liberation.
- G. A. Cohen · He worked to restate Marx's theory of history with the tools of modern analytic philosophy.
- Gayatri Spivak · She draws on Marx's account of labour and capital to read global inequality.
- Gyorgy Lukacs · His best-known book reads Marx through the idea that social relations harden into things.
- Herbert Marcuse · He read Marx through Hegel and aimed to renew his criticism of society.
- Jean-Paul Sartre · Sartre later tried to join existentialism with Marxism in his Critique of Dialectical Reason.
- Jose Carlos Mariategui · He called himself a Marxist and applied Marx's ideas to Peru and its Indigenous majority.
- Jurgen Habermas · Habermas began as a critical theorist reworking Marx's account of society.
- Kwame Nkrumah · He drew on Marx's criticism of capitalism and empire, though he adapted it to African conditions. (scholars disagree about this link)
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty · Merleau-Ponty's political writings of the 1940s engage closely with Marx.
- Max Horkheimer · He set out critical theory as a renewal of Marx's criticism of society.
- Paulo Freire · He drew on Marx's view of oppression and class, along with Christian and existential thought. (scholars disagree about this link)
- Pierre Bourdieu · He took up Marx's view of class and capital, and widened it to culture and education.
- Slavoj Zizek · He joins Marx's criticism of capitalism to his theory of ideology.
- Theodor Adorno · Adorno and the Frankfurt School worked to update Marx's critique for modern culture.
- Walter Benjamin · He turned toward Marx in the late 1920s and used his ideas to read culture and history. (scholars disagree about this link)
Influenced by
- Adam Smith · Marx began his study of capital with the classical economists, Smith first among them.
- G. W. F. Hegel · Marx took Hegel's idea that change comes through clashing opposites and applied it to material life instead of ideas.
- Giambattista Vico · Marx mentions Vico's point that people make their own history. (scholars disagree about this link)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Marx inherited Rousseau's criticism of inequality created by property.
- Ludwig Feuerbach · Marx took his idea that religion reflects human life, and then pushed it toward society and economy.
Reacted against
- Adam Smith · Marx criticised Smith's account of value and of a harmonious market.
- G. W. F. Hegel · Marx argued that Hegel had the relation of ideas and material life upside down.
- Jeremy Bentham · Marx attacked Bentham's picture of human nature as narrow and shaped by the market.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · Marx answered his book on poverty with a sharp reply and broke with him.
Reacted against by
- Hannah Arendt · Arendt criticised Marx for making labour the centre of human life.
- Karl Popper · Popper argued that Marxism is unfalsifiable and that historical prophecy is unsound.
- Simone Weil · Weil admired Marx's analysis of oppression but doubted his belief in progress through revolution.
Runs parallel to
- Ibn Khaldun · Both treat economic life as a driver of social change. (scholars disagree about this link)
Other Marxist thinkers
- Friedrich Engels · 1820 to 1895
- Gyorgy Lukacs · 1885 to 1971
- Antonio Gramsci · 1891 to 1937