Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and represents his greatest intellectual achievement. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The text is the first and most systematic attempt by Marx and Engels to codify for widespread consumption the core historical materialist idea that, as stated in the text's opening words, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published against the backdrop of the Revolutions of 1848 and their subsequent repression across Europe, the Manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents.
Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's closest friend and collaborator.
The Rheinische Zeitung was a 19th-century German newspaper, edited most famously by Karl Marx. The paper was launched in January 1842 and terminated by Prussian state censorship in March 1843. The paper was eventually succeeded by a daily newspaper launched by Karl Marx on behalf of the Communist League in June 1848, called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars as well as a council communist theorist.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between 1 June 1848 and 19 May 1849. It is recognised by historians as one of the most important dailies of the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany. The paper was regarded by its editors and readers as the successor of an earlier Cologne newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, also edited for a time by Karl Marx, which had been suppressed by state censorship over five years earlier.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany is a book by Friedrich Engels, with contributions by Karl Marx. Originally a series of articles in the New York Daily Tribune published from 1851 to 1852 under Marx's byline, the material was first published in book form under the editorship of Eleanor Marx Aveling in 1896. It was not until 1913 that Engels' authorship was publicly known although some new editions continued to appear incorrectly listing Marx as the author as late as 1971.
Alexander Schimmelfennig was a Prussian soldier and political revolutionary. After the German revolutions of 1848–1849, he immigrated to the United States, where he served as a Union Army general in the American Civil War.
Maximilien Joseph Moll was a German labour leader and revolutionary. He was a pioneer of the German labour movement and a figure in early German socialism. Moll was an early associate of Karl Marx.
Peter Nothjung was a tailor in Cologne, Germany, where he joined the Cologne Workers' Association. Nothjung also became a member of the Communist League. As such, he served as an emissary between the Cologne Workers Association and the Central Authority of the Communist League. Nothjung later was accused by Prussian authorities of traitorous activities and became one of defendants in the "Cologne Communist Trial" in 1852.
Johann Heinrich Georg Bürgers was a German journalist and an editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung He became a member of the Communist League and, in 1850, he became a member of the League's Central Authority. For his participation in the 1848-1849 uprising, Bürgers became one of the defendants in the Cologne communist trial in Cologne, Germany in 1852.
Adolph Joseph Maria Bermbach was a German lawyer and revolutionary who worked in Cologne. Bermbach, a member of the Communist League, was a correspondent of Karl Marx and kept him abreast of anti-communist trials in Cologne after Marx had moved to London. Bermbach also was a witness for the defence at that the Cologne Communist Trial. He studied legal science in Bonn from 1841 to 1844. Later he worked as a notary.
Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary.
Roland Daniels was a German physician, socialist, writer, and a friend of Karl Marx. He is considered to be responsible for several of Marx's ideas on ecology including metabolic rift. He was incarcerated during the Cologne Communist Trial which led to tuberculosis and premature death.
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.
The Communist League was an international political party established on 1 June 1847 in London, England. The organisation was formed through the merger of the League of the Just, headed by Karl Schapper, and the Communist Correspondence Committee of Brussels, Belgium, in which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the dominant personalities. The Communist League is regarded as the first Marxist political party and it was on behalf of this group that Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto late in 1847. The Communist League was formally disbanded in November 1852, following the Cologne Communist Trial.
Karl Friedrich Schapper was a German socialist and labour leader. He was one of the pioneers of the labour movement in Germany and an early associate of Wilhelm Weitling and Karl Marx.
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850, but since then it has been used to refer to different concepts by different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism:
The Communist Correspondence Committee was an association of communists founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with committees in Brussels, London, Cologne and Paris with the aim of politically and ideologically organising socialists of different countries to form a revolutionary proletarian party.
