Karl Marx- The Godfather Of Revolution

5 May 2018 marked the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. Gregory Claeys reveals how a poverty-stricken dissident became one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the world.

Karl Marx opened his most famous work, The Communist Manifesto of 1848, with a chilling prophecy.

“A spectre is haunting Europe,” he declared. “The spectre of communism.” This was a great exaggeration: there were few communists anywhere, and the revolutions erupting across France, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire and elsewhere that year were not led by them. By 1917, however, with the overthrow of the Russian tsar Nicholas II and the subsequent coup of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Marxist communism truly was a force to be contended with.

And after Mao Zedong’s 1949 revolution in China, for a time more than half the world’s population was ruled by principles notionally derived from Marx. In paintings, on banners and statues, the fierce grey-bearded face looked out upon the world as if to say: “I made this happen – or, at any rate, explained why history made it inevitable. Go forth and follow my example.” And millions did.

Just how and why Marx became the most influential writer ever is well worth reflection after crossing the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5 May 1818 in the small German town of Trier near the French border.

In his early years, Karl was distinguished by his single-mindedness, ambition and passionate determination to make a decent life for all humanity possible. In 1869, while in Hanover playing a Victorian parlour game called Confessions, he described his “chief characteristic” as “singleness of purpose”.