Karl Marx was born 5 May 1818, in Trier in western Germany. His father was a successful lawyer who had converted from Judaism to Christianity in order to help his law career. Karl Marx was a German political philosopher who laid a theoretical framework for Communism – a radical alternative to capitalist society. With his collaborator Frederich Engels, he wrote the best selling “Communist Manifesto” (1848) which sought to ferment Communist revolution around the world. Marx had a powerful influence over the ideological struggle of the twentieth century.
