Marx, Karl

Marx, Karl (1818-83), German writer.

Karl Marx was a writer for newspapers.

He ran a newspaper in Prussia but it was banned by the government and he moved to Paris.

Later he settled in London as a writer for the New York Tribune. He also wrote a series of books and he used to work on these for ten hours a day in the library of the British Museum.

With Friedrich Engels, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, and later, on his own, Das Kapital. The first volume of this appeared in 1867, the other two volumes after his death.

Das Kapital was a kind of textbook for Communism.

Communism was first put into practice in Russia after the revolution of 1917. It has since been put into practice in many other countries.

By the 1960's Communist governments ruled more than 1,000 million people, one-third of all the people in the world at the time.

Marx died in London and is buried in Highgate Cemetery.