MARX, KARL HEINRICH (1818-1883), German socialist and philosopher, arid head of the International Working Men's Association (see INTERNATIONAL) was born on May 5, 1818, in Treves (Rhenish Prussia). His father, a Jewish lawyer, in 1824 went over to Christianity, and he and his whole family were baptized as Protestants. The ,son went to the high grammar school at Treves, and from 1835 to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He studied first law, then history and philosophy, and in 1841 received the degree of doctor of philosophy. In Berlin he had close intimacy with the brothers Bruno and Edgar Bauer and their Hegelian circle, the so-called "Freien." Beginnings.—His Radical views made a university career out of the question, and he joined the staff of the Rheinische Zeitung, which expounded the ideas of the most advanced section of the Rhenish Radical bourgeoisie. In Oct. 1842 he became one of the editors of this paper, which, however, was suppressed in the beginning of 1843. In the summer of this year Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of a high government official. Through her mother Jenny von Westphalen was a lineal descen dant of the earl of Argyle, who was beheaded under James II. She was a most faithful companion to Marx during all the vicis situdes of his career and died on Dec. 2, 1881; he outliving her only 15 months.
Already in the Rheinische Zeitung there appeared some socialist doctrine couched in a somewhat philosophical strain. Marx, though not accepting these views, refused to criticize them until he had studied the question thoroughly. For this purpose he went in the autumn of 1843 to Paris, where the socialist movement was then at its intellectual zenith, and where he, together with Arnold Ruge, the well-known literary leader of Radical Hegelianism, was to edit a review, the Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbiicher, of which, however, only one number appeared. It contained two articles by Marx—a criticism of Bruno Bauer's treatment of the Jewish question, and an introduction to a criticism of Hegel's philosophy of the law. The first contended that the social emancipation of the Jews could only be achieved together with the emancipation of society from Judaism, i.e. commercialism. The second declared that in Germany no partial political emancipation was possible; there was now only one class from which a real and reckless fight against authority was to be expected—namely, the proletariat. But the proletariat could not emancipate itself except by break ing all the chains, by dissolving the whole constituted society, by recreating man as a member of the human society in the place of established states and classes. "Then the day of German resurrec
tion will be announced by the crowing of the Gallican cock." Both articles thus relegated the solution of the questions then prominent in Germany to the advent of socialism, and so far resembled in principle other socialist publications of the time. But the way of reasoning was different, and the final words of the last quoted sentence pointed to a political revolution, to begin in France as soon as the industrial evolution had created a sufficiently strong proletariat. In contradistinction to most of the socialists of the day, Marx laid stress upon the political struggle as the lever of social emancipation. In some letters which formed part of a correspondence between Marx, Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Mikhail Bakunin, published as an introduction to the review, this opposition of Marx to socialistic "dogmatism" was enunciated in a still more pronounced form : "Nothing prevents us," he said, "from combining our criticism with the criticism of politics, from participating in politics, and consequently in real struggles. We will not, then, oppose the world like doctrinarians with a new principle : here is truth, kneel down here ! We expose new prin ciples to the world out of the principles of the world itself. We don't tell it : 'Give up your struggles, they are rubbish, we will show you the true war-cry.' We explain to it only the real object for which it struggles, and consciousness is a thing it must acquire even if it objects to it." In Paris Marx met Friedrich Engels (182o-1895) (q.v.), from whom the Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbiicher had two articles—a powerfully written outline of a criticism of political economy, and a letter on Carlyle's Past and Present. The first result of the collaboration of Marx and Engels was the book Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer and Kon sorten, a scathing exposition of the perverseness of the high sounding speculative radicalism of Bauer and the other Berlin "Freie." By aid of an analysis which, though not free from exaggeration and a certain diffuseness, bears testimony to the great learning of Marx and the vigorous discerning faculty of both the authors, it is shown that the supposed superior criticism—the "critical criticism" of the Bauer school, based upon the doctrine of a "self-conscious" idea, represented by or incarnated in the critic—was in fact inferior to the older Hegelian idealism. The socialist and working-class movement in Great Britain, France and Germany are defended against the superior criticism of the "holy" Bauer family.