On this day, 14 March 1883, German communist Karl Marx died in London, aged 64.
He had travelled to Britain after being banished from Germany, and arrested and imprisoned in Paris, from which he managed to escape.
The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser reported that at his funeral Friedrich Engels, Marx’s lifelong friend and collaborator, described Marx as the “best hated and worst calumniated man in Europe… [who] had lived, although his work was not finished, to see his views embraced by millions of both hemispheres.”
Marx was clear that the driving force of history is the fight against oppression, writing with Engels: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
"The modern bourgeois [capitalist] society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie [capitalists] and Proletariat [the working class].”
We have a number of works by or about him available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/karl-marx
To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2229979087187229/?type=3
claudiofo liked this
theredpainter liked this lovelesstranniedykefaggot reblogged this from workingclasshistory
lovelesstranniedykefaggot liked this
lilalientwerp liked this
zebracandle reblogged this from tokaiju
zebracandle liked this neverknwsbest liked this
cbien3 reblogged this from damnesdelamer
cbien3 liked this
caesars-side-hoe liked this drunkwingtip liked this
unsung-heartbreaker liked this
reallydeepprince liked this tokaiju reblogged this from shadow-banned-the-hedgehog
tokaiju liked this
nebulas-bebulas liked this seajassmin liked this
kneedeepincynade reblogged this from damnesdelamer
kneedeepincynade liked this
applebutterbomb liked this
randomgay12 liked this
gerwani liked this
shadow-banned-the-hedgehog reblogged this from damnesdelamer
shadow-banned-the-hedgehog liked this
damnesdelamer reblogged this from engelsian
explodingbat liked this
ickivaychalabae liked this innocent-but-guilty liked this
maraskolnikova reblogged this from workingclasshistory
maraskolnikova liked this proletarianfanatic reblogged this from workingclasshistory
intellectualrebel reblogged this from workingclasshistory
bmsfloyd-blog reblogged this from workingclasshistory brolyn-nightfury liked this
harundertroll reblogged this from workingclasshistory
harundertroll liked this
soupyguytime liked this
dynamitedot liked this
wyvwyvern liked this hippiedad reblogged this from workingclasshistory
theoszczepanski liked this
droggykat-blog liked this
queerhistorymajor reblogged this from workingclasshistory
abbylovesoatmeal liked this
ericleonardson liked this
secrettrack liked this
nooneseverlikedatvshowbefore liked this
thingshavechangedbobby liked this
workingclasshistory posted this
- Show more notes
