Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote the most consequential political-economic analysis in modern history. The Communist Manifesto (1848), co-written with Friedrich Engels, is the most translated secular text in history after the Bible. Das Kapital (1867) provided the theoretical analysis of capitalist production, surplus value, and class struggle that inspired revolutionary movements on every continent. By the mid-20th century, roughly one third of the world's population lived under governments claiming to govern in his name — the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and dozens of others. Marx himself never visited a factory. He spent his adult life reading in the British Museum library, supported by Engels' textile fortune, and was buried in 1883 attended by only eleven people. He has been claimed, refuted, rehabilitated, and buried again roughly every decade since.