By Oliver Milsom

 Karl Marx, the son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in Trier, Germany in  Hirschel Marx was a lawyer and to escape anti-Semitism decided to abandon his Jewish faith when Karl was a child. Although the majority of people living in Trier were Catholics, Marx decided to become a Protestant. He also changed his name from Hirschel to Heinrich.  Marx studied law in Bonn in Berlin, but was also introduced to the ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach. In 1841, he received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena. In 1843, after a short spell as editor of a liberal newspaper in Cologne, Marx and his wife Jenny moved to Paris, a hotbed of radical thought. There he became a revolutionary communist and befriended his life long collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Expelled from France, Marx spent two years in Brussels, where his partnership with Engels intensified.  Philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Thesis are the things which come to mind when Karl Marx is mentioned.

 Definition of Marxism: The economic, social, political, pseudo-scientific philosophy, theory, belief, or system based on the works of Karl Marx of Germany. The theory seeks the elimination of the notion of private property in order to gain control of the economic "means of production" by taking it from the bourgeois (the wealthy or propertied class) for the benefit of the proletariat (working class.) His philosophy of history was called "historical materialism" in which his goal was to bring about the end of history, by means of an eventual perfect, classless, utopian society he called Communism.

 In 1848, Western Europe was swept by a wave of revolutions. Marx wanted to use this chaos to his advantage and used a newspaper, the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ to launch his ten points:  1) The abolition of the property/ownership of land.  2) Income tax to be graded to income – the more an individual earned, the more they paid. The less you earned, the less you paid.  3) Abolition of all rights of inheritance.  4) The confiscation of all property of immigrants and rebels.  5) The centralization of all credit into the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive economy.

 6) Centralization of all means of communication and transport into the hands of the state.  7) The extension of factories and the instrument of production owned by the state. Bringing into cultivation all land not being used that could be and an improvement in the fertility of the soil.  8) The equal obligation of all to work and the establishment of an industrial and agricultural armies.  9) The combination of agriculture and manufacturing industries with the gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by the more equable distribution of the population over the country.  10) Free education for all children in public schools. The abolition of child labour in factories; an educated child would be better for society in the long term, than a child not educated.

 The Communist Manifesto is a widely know book write by Karl Marx. Its told people of the world to basically rise up and over through the leaders/factory owners. Karl Marx doesn’t want anyone people to run the would. He want the world to be run in small communes where everyone is the same and has the same money and everyone does there little job to contribute to the commune. Karl also believe that Marxism would not exist if there was still Capitalism because his thoughts where if communism fails they will resort back onto Capitalism. So he thought that for Marxism to exist all opposing sides eg. Capitalism, etc.

 Stage 1: The Proletariat rise up with guns and kill the Bourgeois.  Stage 2: The Proletariat become in CHARGE.  Stage 3: Dictatorship of the Proletariat (the state/the country) borders will wither away and would become communist.

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