Thinker

Karl Marx

(1818–1883) • German

Marxism Critical Theory Political Economy

Introduction

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary whose analysis of capitalism fundamentally shaped modern critical theory, political economy, and revolutionary politics. His critique of political economy—developed across works including The Communist Manifesto (1848), Grundrisse (1857-58), and Capital (1867-1894)—provided systematic analysis of how capitalism exploits workers, generates crises, and creates conditions for its own transformation. Marx’s method of dialectical and historical materialism, his concepts of alienation, commodity fetishism, and ideology, and his analysis of class struggle have influenced every subsequent critical theory tradition.

Marx’s significance extends far beyond his immediate political impact (though Communist movements transformed the 20th century). His conceptual innovations—treating capitalism as historical system with internal contradictions, analyzing how economic structures shape consciousness, revealing exploitation hidden in “free” exchange, and connecting philosophy to revolutionary practice—established frameworks still central to understanding capitalism, racial capitalism, social reproduction, and contemporary crises. Even thinkers who reject Marx’s political conclusions engage his analytical categories: alienation, reification, ideology, and dialectics.

Understanding Marx is essential for critical theory. His work provides conceptual foundations for: the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason; Marxist feminism’s analysis of social reproduction; racial capitalism theory’s connection of racism to accumulation; postcolonial theory’s analysis of imperialism; and contemporary critiques of platform capitalism and surveillance capitalism. Marx remains indispensable not as dogma to follow but as tradition to engage, extend, and transform.

Life and Intellectual Development

Early Life and Hegelian Formation (1818-1843)

Born May 5, 1818, in Trier, Prussia (now Germany), Marx came from middle-class Jewish family that converted to Protestantism to escape discrimination. He studied law at University of Bonn (1835) then University of Berlin (1836-1841), where he became immersed in Young Hegelian circles debating Hegel’s philosophy’s revolutionary or conservative implications.

Hegel’s dialectical method and philosophy of history profoundly influenced Marx. Yet Marx increasingly rejected Hegelian idealism—the view that ideas/Spirit drive history. His dissertation (1841) on ancient atomist philosophy already showed materialist leanings. By 1843, Marx broke decisively with Young Hegelians, arguing philosophy must become practical—not just interpreting world but changing it.

Paris and the Discovery of the Proletariat (1843-1845)

Moving to Paris (1843), Marx encountered French socialism, working-class movements, and began serious economic study. Here he wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (unpublished in his lifetime), developing concepts of alienation under capitalism. These manuscripts showed Marx absorbing Adam Smith and David Ricardo’s political economy while critiquing it from philosophical standpoint.

Paris proved decisive: Marx identified the proletariat (industrial working class) as revolutionary subject capable of universal human emancipation. Unlike peasants tied to land or bourgeoisie defending property, workers had “nothing to lose but their chains.” Their class interest coincided with universal human interest—abolishing all exploitation, not just their own.

Meeting Friedrich Engels (1844) began lifelong collaboration. Engels, managing father’s Manchester factory, provided firsthand knowledge of industrial capitalism and financial support enabling Marx’s theoretical work.

Brussels and Revolutionary Activity (1845-1849)

Expelled from Paris (1845), Marx moved to Brussels, intensifying political organizing and theoretical development. The German Ideology (1845-46, co-written with Engels) articulated historical materialism systematically—arguing material conditions determine consciousness, not vice versa. History proceeds through class struggle driven by contradictions between productive forces and relations of production.

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) critiqued Proudhon’s socialism, developing Marx’s distinctive approach. Most famously, The Communist Manifesto (1848, with Engels) provided revolutionary pamphlet analyzing capitalism’s dynamics, predicting its global spread, and calling workers to unite internationally: “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

The 1848 revolutions across Europe saw Marx return to Germany editing Neue Rheinische Zeitung, supporting democratic revolutions while arguing for proletarian leadership. Revolutions’ failures and subsequent reaction forced permanent exile to London (1849), where Marx spent rest of his life.

London and Capital (1849-1883)

London exile proved intellectually productive despite desperate poverty. Marx spent decades in British Museum’s reading room studying political economy, producing journalism, and organizing International Workingmen’s Association (First International, 1864-1876).

Grundrisse (1857-58), massive notebooks unpublished in Marx’s lifetime, developed systematic critique of political economy. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) published preliminary results, famous for Preface stating historical materialism concisely.

Capital Volume 1 (1867) was Marx’s only volume published in his lifetime—systematic analysis of commodity production, value theory, surplus-value extraction, and capital accumulation. Volumes 2 and 3, edited by Engels from Marx’s manuscripts, appeared posthumously (1885, 1894).

Marx’s final years involved health crises and family tragedies (wife Jenny’s death 1881, daughter Jenny’s 1883). He died March 14, 1883, in London. Engels’ graveside eulogy predicted: “His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.”

Major Works and Key Concepts

The Communist Manifesto (1848)

This revolutionary pamphlet, co-written with Engels, remains Marxism’s most influential text. It provides:

Analysis of capitalism’s revolutionary character: Capitalism constantly revolutionizes production, destroys traditional relations, and creates world market. “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” This creative destruction is simultaneously progressive (developing productive forces) and catastrophic (exploitation, alienation, environmental destruction).

Theory of class struggle: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Each historical epoch (slave society, feudalism, capitalism) features fundamental class antagonism driving social transformation. Capitalism’s antagonism—bourgeoisie vs. proletariat—will culminate in proletarian revolution establishing classless society.

Prediction of capitalism’s globalization: Marx presciently analyzed capitalism’s tendency toward globalization—seeking markets everywhere, transforming all societies in its image, creating interdependent world economy. Contemporary platform capitalism and surveillance capitalism confirm this analysis.

Revolutionary program: Demands including progressive income tax, abolition of inheritance, nationalization of banks/transport, free education, and abolition of child labor. Many have been partially realized through welfare state reforms, though not through revolution Marx envisioned.

Capital Volume 1 (1867)

Marx’s magnum opus systematically analyzes capitalist production:

Labor Theory of Value: Commodities’ value derives from socially necessary labor-time required to produce them. This extends classical political economy (Smith, Ricardo) while radically transforming it. Unlike bourgeois economists who naturalize capitalism, Marx treats value as historically specific to commodity production.

Surplus Value: Capitalism’s secret: workers produce more value than their wages represent. Capitalists purchase labor-power (capacity to work) at its value (cost of reproducing worker) but then extract labor exceeding that value. This surplus value is capitalism’s source of profit—not cheating or unfair exchange but exploitation built into wage labor’s structure.

Primitive Accumulation: Capitalism emerged through violent separation of workers from means of production—enclosures expelling peasants from land, colonialism appropriating resources, slavery providing forced labor. This “original sin” created capitalism’s preconditions: propertyless workers compelled to sell labor-power, concentrated capital, and markets. Racial capitalism theory extends this analysis, showing how primitive accumulation was fundamentally racialized.

The Working Day: Brilliant empirical sections analyzing struggles over working day’s length. Factory inspectors’ reports document horrific exploitation—children worked to death, 16-hour days, industrial accidents. Capital seeks absolute surplus-value (lengthening working day) until workers’ resistance imposes limits, forcing shift to relative surplus-value (intensifying labor, raising productivity).

Machinery and Large-Scale Industry: Technology under capitalism serves intensifying exploitation—deskilling workers, enabling speed-up, creating industrial reserve army (unemployed) depressing wages. Yet machinery also creates conditions for communism—socialized production contradicting private appropriation, associated producers capable of collective management.

Commodity Fetishism: Social relations between people appear as relations between things. Commodities seem to have value as natural property when value actually represents social labor. This “fetish” character mystifies exploitation—workers confront their own labor as alien power (capital) dominating them. Reification extends this analysis, showing how all social relations take thing-like form under capitalism.

Accumulation of Capital: Capital must constantly expand—“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!” This drive generates contradictions: falling rate of profit, overproduction crises, environmental destruction, and immiseration generating revolutionary consciousness. Contemporary crises (2008 financial collapse, climate breakdown, pandemic) vindicate Marx’s crisis theory.

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Though unpublished in Marx’s lifetime, these manuscripts profoundly influenced 20th-century Marxism, particularly Western Marxism and Frankfurt School.

Alienation: Marx’s most systematic treatment. Under capitalism, workers are alienated from:

  1. Products of labor: What they produce confronts them as alien commodities owned by capitalists
  2. Productive activity: Labor becomes forced necessity rather than free creative expression
  3. Species-being: Human essence as conscious, creative, social beings becomes mere means to individual survival
  4. Other humans: Social relations become competitive, mediated by commodities and money

This analysis grounds later critical theory’s concern with domination’s subjective/psychological dimensions beyond economic exploitation. Frankfurt School extended alienation analysis to culture industry, instrumental reason, and one-dimensional society.

Communism as Humanism: Marx envisions communism not as state ownership but as “positive humanism”—abolishing private property enables fully developing human capacities. Free, creative labor becomes life’s prime want; rich individuality develops universal powers; people relate transparently rather than through commodity mediation. This utopian dimension influenced later “humanist Marxism” against Soviet orthodoxy’s economism.

Grundrisse (1857-58)

These notebooks, published only in 1939-41 and translated to English in 1973, influenced autonomism, post-Marxism, and contemporary critical theory.

Method: Marx’s clearest methodological reflections—moving from abstract to concrete, grasping capitalism as totality of internal relations, recognizing categories’ historical specificity. This dialectical method treats concepts not as eternal but as expressions of specific social forms.

Pre-Capitalist Formations: Analysis of non-capitalist societies avoiding both evolutionary stagism and noble savage romanticism. Different societies have different “modes of production” with distinct dynamics. Capitalism isn’t humanity’s destiny but historical formation with beginning and potential end.

General Intellect: Tantalizing fragment suggesting automation could create conditions for post-work society. As machines incorporate society’s collective knowledge (“general intellect”), necessary labor time could be radically reduced, enabling free time for human development. Accelerationism and post-work politics draw on this vision.

Contradiction Between Forces and Relations of Production: Capitalism develops productive forces (technology, science, cooperation) while relations of production (private property, wage labor) increasingly constrain further development. This contradiction generates revolutionary potential.

The German Ideology (1845-46)

Co-written with Engels, this polemical work established historical materialism:

Materialism vs. Idealism: Against Young Hegelians treating ideas as primary, Marx argues consciousness derives from material life: “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.” People’s ideas reflect their social existence—particularly their position in production relations.

Base and Superstructure: Economic “base” (productive forces and relations) conditions political/legal “superstructure” and corresponding consciousness. Yet this isn’t mechanical determinism—superstructure has “relative autonomy,” affecting base while being ultimately conditioned by it. Debates over this metaphor’s implications continue.

Ideology Critique: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”—because those controlling material production also control mental production. Ideology isn’t neutral ideas but systematic distortion serving class domination. Yet ideology also arises from social reality itself (commodity fetishism), not just imposed from above.

Praxis: Revolutionary philosophy must overcome theory/practice split. “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.” This praxis concept—unity of critical theory and revolutionary practice—influenced critical theory’s conception of its political role.

Influence on Critical Theory Traditions

Frankfurt School and Western Marxism

Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) developed “critical theory” extending Marx’s critique to culture, psychology, and philosophy:

  • Drew on Marx’s alienation and reification to analyze modern domination
  • Emphasized Marx’s Hegelian dialectical method against positivist scientism
  • Critiqued orthodox Marxism’s economic reductionism
  • Showed how capitalism colonizes consciousness through culture industry and instrumental reason

While moving beyond orthodox Marxism, Frankfurt School remained fundamentally Marxist—analyzing capitalism as totality, treating domination systemically, and maintaining emancipatory commitment.

Marxist Feminism and Social Reproduction Theory

Feminists extended Marx by analyzing gendered exploitation:

  • Social reproduction theory shows capitalism depends on unwaged domestic labor reproducing labor-power
  • Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch demonstrates primitive accumulation was gendered violence
  • Lise Vogel unified production and reproduction analysis
  • Nancy Fraser shows capitalism systematically generates care crises

These extensions correct Marx’s gender-blindness while defending his fundamental insights about capitalism’s exploitative character.

Racial Capitalism

Cedric Robinson’s racial capitalism argues capitalism was racial from inception:

  • Slavery wasn’t pre-capitalist remnant but capitalist institution
  • Colonialism was capitalism’s spatial form
  • Racism isn’t ideological addition but structural feature organizing accumulation
  • Class cannot be separated from race—they’re mutually constitutive

This challenges orthodox Marxism’s prioritizing class over race while extending Marx’s method to analyze racially structured exploitation.

Postcolonial Theory

Though often critical of Marx’s Eurocentrism, postcolonial theory engages his concepts:

  • Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation illuminates colonial violence
  • His theory of uneven development explains Global North/South disparities
  • His critique of political economy reveals imperialism’s economic logics
  • Yet his optimism about capitalism’s progressive role reproduced colonial ideology

Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and others critically appropriate Marx—using his tools while challenging his Eurocentric assumptions.

Autonomist Marxism

Italian Autonomists (Tronti, Negri) emphasized workers’ autonomous power:

  • Workers’ struggles drive history; capital responds reactively
  • Refusal of work forces capitalist innovation
  • Social factory concept: capitalism colonizes all life, not just workplace
  • Exodus and composition: creating alternatives rather than seizing state power

Autonomism influenced accelerationism, contemporary social movements, and post-work politics.

Contemporary Relevance

Platform Capitalism and Digital Labor

Marx’s analysis illuminates platform capitalism:

  • Platforms extract value from users’ unwaged digital labor
  • Network effects create monopolies Marx predicted
  • Algorithmic management intensifies exploitation
  • Gig economy returns to pre-industrial precarity
  • Data is “new oil”—raw material for accumulation

Marx’s labor theory of value, extended to immaterial/digital labor, reveals how Facebook/Google profit from user-generated content.

Climate Crisis and Metabolic Rift

Marx’s ecological insights, recovered by John Bellamy Foster, address climate crisis:

  • Capitalism creates “metabolic rift” between humans and nature
  • Profit motive drives environmental destruction regardless of consequences
  • Technical fixes can’t solve problems requiring transformed social relations
  • Sustainable society requires overcoming capitalism’s growth imperative

This challenges views of Marx as Promethean productivist, showing his ecological sensitivity.

Financial Crises and Contradictions

2008 financial crisis, pandemic recession, and ongoing instability vindicate Marx’s crisis theory:

  • Tendency toward overproduction/underconsumption
  • Falling rate of profit driving financialization
  • Contradictions between socialized production and private appropriation
  • System lurching between stagnation and speculation

Marx provides tools for understanding why capitalism generates recurring crises rather than equilibrium.

Surveillance and Alienation

Surveillance capitalism extends Marx’s alienation and commodity fetishism:

  • Our data, attention, and social connections are commodified
  • We’re alienated from our own digital traces
  • Social relations appear as algorithmic recommendations
  • Surveillance serves predicting and modifying behavior—ultimate commodification

Shoshana Zuboff explicitly draws on Marx while arguing surveillance capitalism represents new mutation beyond Marx’s analysis.

Necropolitics and Disposability

Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics extends Marx:

  • Capitalism doesn’t just exploit but renders populations disposable
  • Accumulation requires not just profit extraction but death-dealing
  • Certain populations (racialized, colonized) face social death Marx didn’t adequately theorize
  • Understanding capitalism requires analyzing both productive and destructive processes

Critiques and Limitations

Eurocentrism and Colonial Blindness

Postcolonial critics rightly charge Marx with Eurocentrism:

  • Treating non-European societies as “stagnant” or “without history”
  • Viewing colonialism as ultimately progressive (despite acknowledging its violence)
  • Assuming capitalism would spread universally in homogeneous form
  • Privileging European working class as revolutionary subject

Yet Marx’s method—historical materialism, critique of exploitation, attention to contradictions—can analyze colonialism critically when freed from his Eurocentric assumptions.

Gender Blindness

Marx largely ignored gender oppression and unwaged domestic labor:

  • Treated “the worker” as implicitly male
  • Assumed wage labor was exploitation’s primary form
  • Ignored how capitalism depends on women’s unpaged reproductive labor
  • Saw women’s oppression as secondary to class exploitation

Marxist feminism corrects this, showing gender and class are irreducibly interconnected.

Determinism and Economism

Critics accuse Marx of economic determinism—reducing everything to economics. Yet Marx explicitly rejected this:

  • Base/superstructure allows superstructure’s “relative autonomy”
  • Consciousness and struggle matter, not just objective conditions
  • Revolution requires conscious organization, not automatic collapse

However, some Marxist traditions became economistic—mechanical materialism Marx himself rejected.

Failed Predictions

Some Marx predictions failed:

  • Proletarian revolution hasn’t occurred in advanced capitalist countries
  • Middle classes haven’t disappeared into polarized bourgeoisie/proletariat
  • Absolute immiseration hasn’t occurred (though inequality increases)
  • Communist experiments became authoritarian rather than liberatory

Yet many predictions proved prescient: globalization, recurring crises, environmental destruction, technology replacing labor, monopolistic concentration.

The Question of Agency

If material conditions determine consciousness, how can people transform society? This agency problem haunts Marxism:

  • If ideas reflect material base, how do revolutionary ideas emerge?
  • If capitalism produces capitalist consciousness, how is resistance possible?
  • If transformation requires changed conditions, how do people create change?

Marx’s “praxis” concept addresses this—people make history, though not under conditions of their choosing. Yet tension between structure and agency remains.

Essential Works

Primary Texts

  • Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848. Multiple editions.
  • Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In Early Writings. Penguin, 1992.
  • Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. 1845-46. Prometheus Books, 1998.
  • Marx, Karl. The Poverty of Philosophy. 1847. Prometheus Books, 1995.
  • Marx, Karl. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. 1857-58. Penguin, 1993.
  • Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859. Progress Publishers, 1977.
  • Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume 1. 1867. Penguin Classics, 1990.
  • Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume 2. 1885. Penguin Classics, 1992.
  • Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume 3. 1894. Penguin Classics, 1991.
  • Marx, Karl. The Civil War in France. 1871. International Publishers, 1989.
  • Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Programme. 1875. International Publishers, 1989.

Biographies

  • Wheen, Francis. Karl Marx: A Life. W.W. Norton, 1999.
  • Sperber, Jonathan. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life. Liveright, 2013.
  • Gabriel, Mary. Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. Little, Brown, 2011.

Introductions and Guides

  • Harvey, David. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. Verso, 2010.
  • Heinrich, Michael. An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital. Monthly Review Press, 2012.
  • Singer, Peter. Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • McLellan, David. Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. Harper & Row, 1973.
  • Eagleton, Terry. Why Marx Was Right. Yale University Press, 2011.

Secondary Literature

  • Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. 1923. MIT Press, 1971.
  • Althusser, Louis. For Marx. 1965. Verso, 2005.
  • Jameson, Fredric. Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One. Verso, 2011.
  • Harvey, David. The Limits to Capital. Verso, 2006.
  • Postone, Moishe. Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
  • Rosdolsky, Roman. The Making of Marx’s Capital. Pluto Press, 1977.
  • Cohen, G.A. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Princeton University Press, 1978.
  • Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. Verso, 2002.

Contemporary Extensions

  • Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, 2004.
  • Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. 1983. UNC Press, 2000.
  • Fraser, Nancy. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Verso, 2013.
  • Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review Press, 2000.
  • Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capitalism. Polity, 2016.
  • Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.

See Also

Contemporary Applications