Character Catalog

Written with Engels for the Communist League, this founding text sets out the theory of class struggle and calls on the proletarians of all countries to unite. It is the most widely read political text in modern history.

Marx's masterwork, a scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production, labor value, and surplus value. Volumes II and III were published posthumously by Engels.

Early texts unpublished during Marx's lifetime, in which he develops his theory of the alienation of the worker under capitalism. Published in 1932, they had an immense influence in the 20th century.

Written with Engels, this work lays the foundations of historical materialism: the idea that economic structures (base) determine ideas and institutions (superstructure).

A brilliant analysis of the 1851 coup d'état in France, in which Marx refines his conception of the State and social classes. Contains the famous phrase: 'history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy, then as farce'.

A text in which Marx analyzes the Paris Commune as the first experience of a workers' government and draws theoretical lessons from it on the question of the State.

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an 'immense accumulation of commodities'. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.

The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Marx's birthplace, in the Moselle valley. It is here that he was born in 1818 and received his early education in a region shaped by the ideas of the French Revolution.

Marx lived here from 1843 to 1845 and wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. He moved in socialist circles and met Proudhon, Heine, and above all Engels.

Place of exile from 1845 to 1848, where Marx and Engels wrote The German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto, commissioned by the League of Communists.

A working-class district of London where Marx lived in often extreme poverty with his family for many years, most notably at 28 Dean Street.

Marx's daily workplace for over twenty years, where he combed through thousands of works on political economy to write Capital.

Marx wrote in a frantic and compulsive manner, covering thousands of pages of manuscripts, notes and correspondence. His quill was the instrument of his relentless thinking.

Marx spent years in the reading room of the British Museum in London, writing the bulk of Capital there. His usual seat is still pointed out to visitors.

A heavy pipe smoker, Marx consumed tobacco in large quantities, which worsened his chronic bronchitis and poor health throughout his life in exile in London.

Marx was a voracious reader of the European economic and political press, poring over British parliamentary reports, industrial statistics and workers' newspapers to fuel his analysis.

Marx maintained a massive correspondence with Engels, activists and intellectuals across Europe. These letters today constitute an irreplaceable historical source.

Marx's desk in his Soho lodgings in London was famous for its extreme disorder: books, newspapers, manuscripts and objects piled up in an apparently chaotic yet fertile jumble.