Lesson 22: The Birth of Marxism and the Rise of the International

Marx and Engels

Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany, on May 5, 1818. In an essay written at the age of 17 when he graduated from high school, Marx believed that the goal of choosing a career should be "the happiness of mankind and our own perfection" and that "if a man works only for himself, he may become a famous scholar, a great philosopher, a brilliant poet, but he can never become a perfect and faultless man. If a man works only for himself, he may become a famous scholar, a great philosopher, a brilliant poet, but he can never become a great man of perfection.

After graduating from his doctoral program, Marx became politically active. He published several articles in the Rheinische Zeitung attacking the Prussian government's prohibition of freedom of the press. When the Prussian government decided to seize the newspaper, Marx was forced to move to Paris, France.

 In Paris, Marx met the young Friedrich Engels. Engels came from a family of German factory owners and as a young man worked as a clerk in his father's factory in Manchester, England. The two young men discussed various theories and the European workers' movement together. From then on, Engels not only became a like-minded comrade in Marx's thinking and career, but also gave Marx a lot of financial support.

In 1849, Marx moved to London, where he remained until his death. "I am a citizen of the world" was Marx's famous saying, and a true reflection of his revolutionary exile. After settling in London, the British Museum Library became a place Marx had to visit every day. It was there that he completed most of his works, among which Capital is still one of his most influential masterpieces.

Marx died in London on March 14, 1883, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Marx and Engels critically inherited the essence of their predecessors' thought and formed the Marxist theory. Marxist theory mainly includes three components: Marxist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism.

The Communist Manifesto

In 1848, the Communist Manifesto, a program drafted by Marx and Engels for the Communist League, was officially published in London. Marx was 30 years old and Engels was 28.

The Communist Manifesto states that all written history is the history of class struggle. As mankind entered the capitalist era, society as a whole increasingly split into two opposing classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Capitalist society will certainly be replaced by a communist society free from class exploitation and oppression.

The Communist Manifesto affirms that the bourgeoisie has played a very revolutionary role in history. "The bourgeoisie has created more and greater productive forces in its less than one hundred years of class rule than all the productive forces created in all past generations."

The working class created enormous social wealth, but they became relatively increasingly impoverished. "Workers became destitute, and poverty grew faster than population and wealth. From this it is clear that the bourgeoisie can no longer be the ruling class of society, no longer be able to impose on society the conditions of existence of its own class as the law that governs everything."

The Communist Manifesto called on the working class to organize and establish the proletariat's own party, the Communist Party, to violently overthrow bourgeois rule and carry out a proletarian revolution.

The publication of the Communist Manifesto marked the birth of Marxism. Since its publication, the Communist Manifesto has been translated into more than 200 languages and published more than 1,000 times.

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