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Karl Marx

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On the Coordinates: 6.4 Political Philosophy · 6.6 Philosophy of History · 6.22 Philosophy of Work

Also known as Karl Heinrich Marx

1818 – 1883 · Trier, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, London

Traditions: Modern European

Schools: Marxism

In brief

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher, economist and revolutionary who spent most of his later life in exile in London. Starting from Hegel and from Feuerbach’s critique of religion, he developed, often with Friedrich Engels, a materialist account of history in which the way a society produces its means of life shapes its laws, politics and ideas. He analysed capitalism as a system that alienates workers and extracts surplus value from their labour, and he argued that philosophy should aim to change the world, not only interpret it. His work founded a broad intellectual tradition and inspired political movements across the world.

In depth Last reviewed

Connections

Places
Paris workedCologne workedLondon worked, diedTrier bornBerlin studied
Tradition
Modern EuropeanMarxism
Influences
11 sourced relationships

Life

Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier, in the Prussian Rhineland. He studied at the University of Bonn from 1835 and at Berlin from 1836, where he engaged closely with Hegel’s philosophy. In 1841 the University of Jena awarded him a doctorate, in absentia, for a dissertation on the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. He turned to journalism, writing for the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne until Prussia banned it in 1843. That October he moved to Paris, where his essays on the Jewish question and on Hegel’s philosophy of right appeared, and where he wrote the manuscripts later published as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In 1844 he began his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels, whom he had first met in 1842. Expelled from France, he moved to Brussels in 1845, where he and Engels wrote The German Ideology and, early in 1848, the Communist Manifesto. After the revolutions of 1848 he settled in London in 1849. There he worked for decades on the critique of political economy. Capital, Volume I appeared in 1867. He died in London on 14 March 1883.

Problems

  • What alienation is and why work under capitalism produces it
  • How material production shapes society and ideas
  • Whether history is driven by class struggle
  • How capitalist profit arises and whether it is exploitation
  • What role philosophy should play in changing society

Core ideas

Alienation

In the 1844 Manuscripts Marx argues that under capitalism workers are alienated in four ways. They are separated from the product of their labour, which belongs to someone else and confronts them as an alien power. They are separated from their productive activity, which becomes forced labour rather than self-expression. They are separated from other people, who appear as competitors. And they are separated from their ‘species-being’, the distinctively human capacity for free, creative and social production. The diagnosis assumes a view of what a fulfilled human life would be. Critics ask whether that view is too specific, and whether the later Marx kept it.

Historical materialism

In the 1859 Preface Marx states: ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.’ The relations of production form ‘the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure’. As productive forces develop, existing relations ‘turn into their fetters’, and an era of social revolution begins. G. A. Cohen reconstructed this as a functional theory: relations of production exist because they suit the development of productive forces. Jon Elster objected that such functional explanations need a mechanism Marx does not supply. Whether Marx offered a general theory of history at all is itself disputed.

Exploitation and surplus value

In Capital, Marx analyses the commodity and argues that the value of goods is determined by the socially necessary labour time needed to produce them. Workers sell their capacity to work, labour power, for a wage equal to its value: what it costs to sustain them. But in a working day they produce more value than this. The difference, surplus value, is appropriated by the capitalist as profit. So exploitation does not depend on cheating; it is built into a fair exchange in the market. Critics have attacked the labour theory of value, and economists such as John Roemer have tried to restate the idea of exploitation without it.

Ideology, religion and changing the world

Following Feuerbach, Marx saw religion as a projection of human powers onto an imagined God. In an essay written in 1843–44 he called it ‘the opium of the people’, a consolation for real suffering, and argued that criticism of religion must become criticism of the social conditions that need it. More generally, the ruling ideas of an age tend to serve the ruling class, presenting particular interests as universal truths: this is the critical sense of ‘ideology’. The eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach sums up his attitude: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.’

Works

  • Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction written 1843–44; published 1844Contains the remark on religion as ‘the opium of the people’.
  • Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts written 1844; published posthumouslyHis early account of alienated labour.
  • Theses on Feuerbach written 1845; published by Engels 1888Eleven short notes criticising earlier materialism and idealism.
  • The German Ideology (with Engels) written 1845–1846Sets out the materialist conception of history; unpublished in their lifetimes.
  • Manifesto of the Communist Party (with Engels) 1848A political pamphlet opening with the claim that history is the history of class struggles.
  • A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Preface) 1859The preface is the canonical short statement of historical materialism.
  • Capital, Volume I 1867His analysis of the commodity, surplus value and capital accumulation.In the Book corner

Influences and relationships

11 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Karl Marx 6

Karl Marx shaped 5

Reception

Marx’s ideas became the basis of a broad intellectual tradition and of political movements and states that claimed his name, which has made neutral assessment difficult. Within philosophy, interpreters have divided over what his core theory is. Louis Althusser offered a structuralist reading. Analytical Marxists, including G. A. Cohen, Jon Elster and John Roemer, restated his theories of history and exploitation with the tools of analytic philosophy and economics, and debated whether he had a theory of justice. His critique of ideology shaped later critical social theory, and his analysis of capitalism remains a reference point in economics, sociology, history and political philosophy.

Disputed interpretations

Was Marx a determinist?

Some passages, especially in the 1859 Preface, suggest that technology and economic forces determine history, with ideas and politics as mere effects. Cohen defended a sophisticated version of this technological reading. Critics such as Elster argue that Marx’s functional explanations lack mechanisms, and structuralists such as Althusser read the theory quite differently. Others stress the role of class struggle and political action in his writings, and some doubt he had a general theory of history at all.

Did Marx think capitalism unjust?

Allen Wood argued that Marx did not condemn capitalism as unjust, since he treated justice as a standard internal to each mode of production, and capitalism meets its own standards. Ziyad Husami argued that Marx judged it unjust by a higher, proletarian standard. G. A. Cohen remarked that Marx believed capitalism was unjust but did not believe that he believed it.

Primary texts

Sources

Scholarly sources and reference works, free to read online.

Guides

In the Book corner

  • Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 1844 (first published 1932) · Intermediate
    A set of notebooks written by the young Marx in Paris in 1844 and first published in full in 1932, when they…
  • Capital, Volume I 1867 · Advanced
    The only volume of Capital that Marx saw through the press; the second and third were edited by Engels from his drafts.…

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On the Atlas

  • Paris worked here, 1845
  • Cologne worked here, 1842
  • London worked here, 1849–1883; died here, 1883
  • Trier born here, 1818
  • Berlin studied here, 1836–1841

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Cite this page

Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 26 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 26). Karl Marx. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/karl-marx/

MLA (9th edition)

“Karl Marx.” Coordinates of Thought, 26 Oct. 2026, coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/karl-marx/. Accessed [date accessed].

Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Karl Marx.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 26, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/karl-marx/.

BibTeX

@misc{cot-karl-marx-2026,
  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Karl Marx},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/karl-marx/},
  note         = {Last updated 26 October 2026}
}

RIS

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T2  - Coordinates of Thought
PB  - Coordinates of Thought
PY  - 2026
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For reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote): BibTeX file · RIS file

Where next

  1. On the Atlas · where they workedParisSee the place, century by century, and who else was there.

Tradition: Modern European philosophyThinkers A–Z