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Karl Marx was a philosopher who lived a long time ago.

Marx believed that there were two main groups of people in society: the bourgeoisie, who owned the businesses and factories, and the proletariat, who worked for them. He thought that the bourgeoisie were always trying to make more money and get ahead, even if it meant exploiting the proletariat and keeping them poor.

Marx believed that there should be a revolution, where the proletariat would rise up and take control of the businesses and factories, so that everyone could work together and share the wealth more equally. This idea is called communism.

Great synopsis by u/dogmeatjones25

I'll just add that Marx lived in the mid-1800s, in Germany, and was very influenced by the Industrial Revolution and economics and politics of his day. His theory shouldn't be taken as "all Communism" any more than the Founding Fathers of the United States should be equated to "all Democracy".

His ideas though, which you can better call "Marxism" or "Marxist Communism" where the germ that grew into 20th century into things like Leninism, Stalinism, and the communism we saw in Soviet Russia and modern day China. It's not fair to say that modern day China is "Marxist" or to equate things like Socialism or Soviet Russia to Marx either.

>Marx believed that there should be a revolution

Slight correction:

Marx believed that there inevitably MUST be a proletarian revolution as logical next step after the bourgeois revolution (french revolution and later the 1848 springtime of nations) kicked out the aristocracy. He thought it was a natural law that this second revolution would eventually come when the proletariat that originally supported the liberal revolution realized that they didn't gain anything from it yet.

Karl Marx was a revolutionary thinker who believed that all humans were equal and should work together to create a society without class distinctions.

Karl Marx was a philosopher who believed that the working class should overthrow the upper class in order to create a more equal society.

In addition to what is mentioned above, there was an idea that capitalism is or can be inherently unstable and that humans should not strictly be tied to the value which they bring to those for whom they work. Instead, resources are assumedly plenty and should be shared equally so that all people can profit from labor and pursue passions as well. He also argued that the society which you are in will change your world view: ie in capitalism a poor starving artist may be considered by and large a loser, whereas in his treatment of communism they would simply be an artist contributing art to society without negative inflection. It's important to note that during his tenure on planet earth when he was thinking about these things communism had started mostly as a movement within a small group of intellectuals, depending on where you live it has different connotations today.

Yeah, and he also thought that humans were cattle and should be slaughtered for the greater good.

What? Source?

its the usual " trust me bro, communism bad" dribble.

Did he ever predict when this second revolution comes around?

Do you believe communism would do more good than bad to society?

"Once the working class realizes it's being exploited"

But the revolution he predicted came, and it turned out way different than he expected (the russian revolution)

your question was , who was the man, and this has been answered.

i cannot give you a legitimate answer on this that wouldnt get political, so in all due respect i'd rather not.

> I'll just add that Marx lived in the mid-1800s, in Germany,

Worth noting that in his 20s he was exiled from Prussia at the request of the Russian monarchy (for his articles critical of them), lived in Paris from 1843-1845 until the Prussian Government got him expelled from France and had his radial German-language (but Paris-based) newspaper shut down. He lived in Brussels until 1848, when he was expelled on allegations that he had helped fund Belgian workers planning a revolution, and he bounced between a post-revolution France and Cologne, until he was kicked out of both, moving to London in 1849, aged 30, where he lived until his death.

Marx's most famous works (Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto) were both written in London.

Touché

He specifically mentions that it will occur in the richest most developed and technologically advanced country in the world.

It was one of the criticisms of China and Russia, they tried to create communism without a large base of workers, map actually created his own theories based on farmers.

That being said, his writings haven't aged well at all, reading it with a modern lens you can see how aged it is.

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