Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany (then part of Prussia), and
studied law, history, and philosophy at the universities of Bonn,
Berlin, and Jena. Marx travelled between Prussia, Paris, and
Brussels, working at various jobs until finally settling in London
in 1849, where he lived the remainder of his life. Most of his
time was spent in the mainly unpaid pursuits of writing and
studying economics in the library of the British Museum. Marx’s
contributions to economics are intricately bound to his views of
history and society. The Communist Manifesto was published
with Friedrich Engels in 1848, his Critique of Political Economy
was published in 1859, and in 1867 the first volume of Das
Kapital was completed. (The remaining volumes, edited by
Engels, were published after Marx’s death.)
For Marx, capitalism was a stage in an evolutionary process
from a primitive agricultural economy toward an inevitable
elimination of private property and the class structure. Marx’s
“labour theory of value,” whereby the quantity of labour used in
the manufacture of a product determined its value, held the
central place in his economic thought. He believed that the
worker provided “surplus value” to the capitalist. The capitalist
would then use the profit arising from this surplus value to
reinvest in plant and machinery. Through time, more would be