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Karl Marx

Original nameKarl Marx

Author of Capital, the most profound critic of capitalism

Those Who Argued Over Markets for a Century · Critics & the Macro Debate
Political EconomyCapitalSurplus ValueClass

Who they are

A German thinker, economist, and revolutionary. He inherited classical economics and turned it on its head: taking up Ricardo’s labor theory of value, he derived the theory of "surplus value," arguing that the capitalist’s profit comes from the uncompensated appropriation of the worker’s labor, and thereby diagnosed capitalism as a system riddled with inner contradictions and destined to dissolve itself. His monumental work Capital is one of the most profound and systematic dissections of the logic by which capital operates. Whether one agrees or not, he profoundly changed the twentieth century: his thought became the theoretical foundation of the socialist movement, and of the political map of half the world — a man writing books in the British Museum reshaped the whole of modern history.

Primary sourcesMarx, CapitalThe Communist Manifesto (with Engels)

Key stories

A History Written in a Library

Marx lived his life in poverty and exile, and in his later years labored for long stretches in the reading room of the British Museum in London, writing Capital; his usual seat, it is said, wore a groove into the floor. He never saw his thought become reality. Yet what this destitute scholar wrote in a library went on to spark revolutions that swept the globe, establish a bloc of socialist states, and profoundly shape reforms within capitalist countries too — rarely has one man’s study-bound thought so violently rewritten an entire century.

Version differences

Whether Marx’s theory is the most profound diagnosis of capitalism, or a utopia disproven by twentieth-century practice, has been judged at both extremes for over a century; this site states his thought and the vast dispute without a final verdict.

Relationships

Mentor
⚖️David Ricardo　took up Ricardo’s labor theory of value and overturned it

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

Thought that reshaped the twentieth centuryMarx’s thought became the theoretical foundation of the socialist movement and of the political map of half the world; even in capitalist countries, at every economic crisis people reread Marx’s dissection of the inner contradictions of capital.

Appears in

The Critic of CapitalismMarx’s Capital: A History Written in a Library
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