The life and teaching of Karl Marx

The author traces his subject's life from family origins and university study through friendships, editorial controversies, political exile, and sustained activism. He recounts collaboration with a close comrade, polemics with contemporary thinkers, participation in revolutionary movements including the International and the Paris Commune, and the pressures of later years. A substantial section explicates the theoretical system: the materialist conception of history, analysis of class struggle and class-consciousness, the role of the labor movement and the idea of proletarian dictatorship, followed by an outline of the economic critique of capitalist exploitation and its internal contradictions.