Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Who They Were

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, economist and revolutionary whose critique of capitalism grew out of the classical political economy of Smith and Ricardo. Working largely in exile -- much of it in London -- he developed a materialist reading of history in which the way a society organizes production shapes its politics, law and ideas. He took the classical labour theory of value he inherited from Ricardo and turned it into an account of surplus value and exploitation, arguing that capitalism's own dynamics generate recurring crises. His influence reached far beyond economics into politics, sociology and philosophy, and his name became attached to a body of thought and to political movements that shaped much of the twentieth century.

Key Contributions

Marx's central economic work is Das Kapital, whose first volume he published in 1867; volumes two and three were assembled from his notes by Friedrich Engels and appeared after Marx's death in 1883. Under his labour theory of value, the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. From this he built the concept of surplus value -- the difference between the value labour produces and the wage it receives -- which he presented as the source of profit and of exploitation. He argued that capitalism's internal dynamics generate crises and a structural squeeze on profitability. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) he wrote the famous line, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'

On EconRecall

Philosopher and economist who reworked the classical labour theory of value into a theory of exploitation and crisis. Play the games that feature Karl Marx: