Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary socialist whose work has shaped the course of modern history more than almost any other thinker. Exiled from Germany and then France, he spent most of his adult life in London, supported by his collaborator Friedrich Engels. Together they wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848); Marx alone produced Das Kapital (1867), his systematic critique of capitalism. His analysis of history as driven by class conflict and material conditions — historical materialism — became the intellectual foundation of socialist and communist movements worldwide.