Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born in the town of Trèves (Trier, Germany) in what was then Prussia. He studied history and philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Bonn and received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Jena. His doctoral dissertation was on the Greek atomism espoused by Democritus and Epicuras. the influence of Hegel's philosophy in Germany during this time was so widespread that most philosophers divided themselves into two differing camps: the Hegelian right, consisting mainly of older, more conservative philosophers who gave an orthodox reading of Hegel's views of religion and morality, and the Hegelian left, consisting mainly of younger, more radical philosophers. Marx belonged to the latter group who called themselves "the Young Hegelians." They took Hegel's views on social and political issues as literally false but full of hidden truths that implied the very opposite of what Hegel had originally thought. Indeed, Marx would go on to claim that his own system of materialistic dialectic was Hegel's upside down idealistic dialectic turned right side up.
Although Marx worked for a while as a newspaper editor for the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung and as a reporter in London for the New York Tribune, he spent most of his life unemployed and extremely poor. Several of his children died of poverty. Supported by his friend and coauthor of the communist manifesto, Frederick Engels, Marx nevertheless managed to produce an extremely influential body of work; he is generally recognized as the most important figure in the history of socialist thought.
