As a university student, Karl Marx (1818-1883) joined a movement

known as the Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political

and cultural establishments of the day. He became a journalist, and
the radical nature of his writings would eventually get him expelled by
the governments of Germany, France and Belgium. In 1848, Marx and
fellow German thinker Friedrich Engels published “The Communist
Manifesto,” which introduced their concept of socialism as a natural
result of the conflicts inherent in the capitalist system. Marx later
moved to London, where he would live for the rest of his life. In 1867,
he published the first volume of “Capital” (Das Kapital), in which he
laid out his vision of capitalism and its inevitable tendencies toward
self-destruction, and took part in a growing international workers’
movement based on his revolutionary theories.

Karl Marx’s Early Life and Education

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Prussia; he was the oldest
surviving boy in a family of nine children. Both of his parents were
Jewish, and descended from a long line of rabbis, but his father, a
lawyer, converted to Lutheranism in 1816 due to contemporary laws
barring Jews from higher society. Young Karl was baptized in the
same church at the age of 6, but later became an atheist.

Karl Marx’s Life in London and “Das Kapital”

With revolutionary uprisings engulfing Europe in 1848, Marx left

Belgium just before being expelled by that country’s government. He
briefly returned to Paris and Germany before settling in London, where
he would live for the rest of his life, despite being denied British
citizenship. He worked as a journalist there, including 10 years as a
correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, but never quite
managed to earn a living wage, and was supported financially by
Engels. In time, Marx became increasingly isolated from fellow
London Communists, and focused more on developing his economic
theories. In 1864, however, he helped found the International
Workingmen’s Association (known as the First International) and
wrote its inaugural address. Three years later, Marx published the first
volume of “Capital” (Das Kapital) his masterwork of economic theory.
In it he expressed a desire to reveal “the economic law of motion of
modern society” and laid out his theory of capitalism as a dynamic
system that contained the seeds of its own self-destruction and
subsequent triumph of communism. Marx would spend the rest of his
life working on manuscripts for additional volumes, but they remained
unfinished at the time of his death, of pleurisy, on March 14, 1883.

Socialism

Socialism describes any political or economic theory that says the

community, rather than individuals, should own and manage property
and natural resources. The term “socialism” has been applied to very
different economic and political systems throughout history, including
utopianism, anarchism, Soviet communism and social democracy.
These systems vary widely in structure, but they share an opposition
to an unrestricted market economy, and the belief that public
ownership of the means of production (and making money) will lead to
better distribution of wealth and a more egalitarian society.

Emergence of socialism

The intellectual roots of socialism go back at least as far as ancient

Greek times, when the philosopher Plato depicted a type of collective
society in his dialog, Republic (360 B.C.). In 16th-century
England, Thomas More drew on Platonic ideals for his Utopia, an
imaginary island where money has been abolished and people live
and work communally.

In the late 18th century, the invention of the steam engine powered
the Industrial Revolution, which brought sweeping economic and
social change first to Great Britain, then to the rest of the world.
Factory owners became wealthy, while many workers lived in
increasing poverty, laboring for long hours under difficult and
sometimes dangerous conditions. ocialism emerged as a response to
the expanding capitalist system. It presented an alternative, aimed at
improving the lot of the working class and creating a more egalitarian
society. In its emphasis on public ownership of the means of
production, socialism contrasted sharply with capitalism, which is
based around a free market system and private ownership.

Influence of Karl Marx

It was Karl Marx, undoubtedly the most influential theorist of socialism,

who called Owen, Fourier and other earlier socialist thinkers
“utopians,” and dismissed their visions as dreamy and unrealistic. For
Marx, society was made up of classes: When certain classes
controlled the means of production, they used that power to exploit the
labor class.

In their 1848 work The Communist Manifesto, Marx and his

collaborator, Friedrich Engels, argued that true “scientific socialism”
could be established only after a revolutionary class struggle, with the
workers emerging on top.

Though Marx died in 1883, his influence on socialist thought only grew
after his death. His ideas were taken up and expanded upon by
various political parties (such as the German Social Democratic Party)
and leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.

Marx’s emphasis on the revolutionary clash between capital and labor

came to dominate most socialist thought, but other brands of socialism
continued to develop. Christian socialism, or collective societies
formed around Christian religious principles. Anarchism saw not just
capitalism but government as harmful and unnecessary. Social
democracy held that socialist aims could be achieved through gradual
political reform rather than revolution.

Socialism in the 20th Century

In the 20th century—particularly after the Russian Revolution of 1917
and the formation of the Soviet Union—social democracy and
communism emerged as the two most dominant socialist movements
throughout the world.

By the end of the 1920s, Lenin’s revolution-focused view of socialism

had given way to the foundation of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union and its consolidation of absolute power under Joseph Stalin.
Soviet and other communists joined forces with other socialist
movements in resisting fascism. After World War II, this alliance
dissolved as the Soviet Union established communist regimes across
Eastern Europe.

With the collapse of these regimes in the late 1980s, and the
ultimate fall of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, communism as a global
political force was greatly diminished. Only China, Cuba, North Korea,
Laos and Vietnam remain communist states.

Meanwhile, over the course of the 20th century, social democratic

parties won support in many European countries by pursuing a more
centrist ideology. Their ideas called for a gradual pursuit of social
reforms (like public education and universal healthcare) through the
processes of democratic government within a largely capitalist system.

Socialism in the United States

In the United States, the Socialist Party never enjoyed the same
success as in Europe, reaching its peak of support in 1912, when
Eugene V. Debs won 6 percent of the vote in that year’s presidential
election. But social reform programs like Social Security and
Medicare, which opponents once denounced as socialist, became
over time a well-accepted part of American society.

Some liberal politicians in the United States have embraced a

variation on social democracy known as democratic socialism. This
calls for following socialist models in Scandinavia, Canada, Great
Britain and other nations, including single-payer health care, free
college tuition and higher taxes on the wealthy.

On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative U.S.

politicians often label such policies as communist. They point to
authoritarian socialist regimes such as that of Venezuela to raise
concerns about big government.

The wide range of interpretations and definitions of socialism across

the political spectrum, and the lack of a common understanding of
what socialism is or how it looks in practice reflects its complicated
evolution. Nonetheless, socialist parties and ideas continue to
influence policy in nations around the world. And socialism’s
persistence speaks to the enduring appeal of calling for a more
egalitarian society.

Communist Manifesto

The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx and

Engels as the Communist League’s programme on the instruction of
its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8, 1847),
which signified a victory for the followers of a new proletarian line
during the discussion of the programme questions.

When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at

the conclusion that the final programme document should be in the
form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of November 23-
24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the
time and retained in the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith”
and “Principles of Communism,” was not suitable for a full and
substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a
comprehensive formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and
tasks. See also “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany,”
issued by Marx soon after publication of the Manifesto, which
addressed the immediate demands of the movement. Marx and
Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still
in London immediately after the congress, and continued until about
December 13 when Marx returned to Brussels; they resumed their
work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After
Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his
return on January 31, Marx worked on the Manifesto alone

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the

powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this
spectre. Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be

itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the
whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and
meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto
of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in

London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the
English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

Bourgeois and Proletarians

The history of all previously existing society† is the history of class

struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master‡ and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time
ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in
the common ruin of the contending classes.

Bourgeois
A sociologically-defined social class, especially in contemporary times,
referring to people with a certain cultural and financial
capital belonging to the middle or upper middle class: the upper
(haute), middle (moyenne), and petty (petite) bourgeoisie (which are
collectively designated "the bourgeoisie"); an affluent and often
opulent stratum of the middle class who stand opposite
the proletariat class.

Proletarians

The proletariat (/ˌproʊlɪˈtɛəriət/ from Latin proletarius "producing

offspring") is the class of wage-earners in an economic society whose
only possession of significant material value is their labour-
power (how much work they can do).[1] A member of such a class is
a proletarian.

Marxist theory considers the proletariat to be oppressed

by capitalism and the wage system. This oppression gives the
proletariat common economic and political interests that transcend
national boundaries. These common interests put the proletariat in a
position to unite and take power away from the capitalist class
(see dictatorship of the proletariat), in order to create
a communist society free from class distinctions.

Proletarians and Communists

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a
whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the
other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and
apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any
sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the
proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the
other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of
the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to
the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently
of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the
struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass
through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the
movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every
country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other
hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat
the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian
movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as
that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a
class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political
power by the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions of the
Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have
been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal
reformer.