Marx, Karl Heinrich

German philosopher, economist, and social theorist whose account of class change through conflict, ‘the materialist conception of history’ is known as historical, or dialectical, materialism (see Marxism). His Das Kapital/Capital (1867–95) is the fundamental text of Marxist economics, and his systematic theses on class struggle, history, and the importance of economic factors in politics have exercised an enormous influence on later thinkers and political activists.

In 1844 Marx began his lifelong collaboration with the German social and political philosopher Friedrich Engels, with whom he developed the Marxist philosophy, first formulated in their joint works Die heilige Familie/The Holy Family (1844) and Die deutsche Ideologie/German Ideology (1846) (which contains the theory demonstrating the material basis of all human activity: ‘Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life’). They joined the Communist League, a German refugee organization, and 1847–48 prepared its programme, The Communist Manifesto, widely considered to be the most influential political pamphlet ever written, and Marx's monumental work Das Kapital/Capital (1867; first volume). Marx never lived to finish this work and it remained unread and almost unreviewed for over two decades. Engels spent over ten years after Marx's death preparing the second and third volumes for publication (1885, 1894). Other more widely read works by Marx were Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich/Class Struggles in France (1849), Die Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte/The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), and Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie/Critique of Political Economy (1859).