Author of Capital and leader of the First International
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" — Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
Born into a lawyer's family in Trier, he began as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. He renounced his Prussian citizenship in 1845 and remained stateless for the rest of his life, living in London exile from 1849. Over forty years with Engels he wrote the Communist Manifesto and Capital and led the First International. The late Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) takes apart, line by line, the Lassallean thinking lodged in the German workers' party's unity programme, his last answer to the idea of the state as the instrument of socialism.
Career Timeline
- 1842–1843Editor of the Rheinische Zeitung until Prussian censorship closed it
- 1844Met Engels in Paris, beginning a lifelong collaboration
- 1845Renounced Prussian citizenship; stateless thereafter
- 1848Published the Communist Manifesto; edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
- 1849–1883Exile in London, writing Capital in the British Museum reading room
- 1864–1872Drafted the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association and led its General Council
- 1867Published Capital, Volume I
- 1871The Civil War in France — defended the Paris Commune as a form of working-class government
- 1875Wrote the Critique of the Gotha Programme, sent to Bracke for the leadership alone
- 1883Died in London and was buried at Highgate Cemetery
The Paris Commune and The Civil War in France
On 18 March 1871, the workers of Paris rose in armed rebellion and held the city for 72 days. Marx tracked events from London, gathering newspaper clippings and correspondence from Commune leaders, and drafted The Civil War in France as the official address of the General Council of the First International. The pamphlet was published in June 1871, barely two weeks after the Commune was crushed. Marx called the Commune "the form at last discovered": the political form that proved that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." A standing army abolished and replaced by the armed people, elected councillors revocable at short term, a working body both executive and legislative: this was the outline Marx drew from the Commune. In his 1891 preface, Engels explicitly named it an example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and Lenin, in The State and Revolution (1917), made this passage the centerpiece of the Marxist theory of the state.