Marx Dies in Obscurity: His Ideas Reshape the World
Karl Marx spent most of his adult life broke, borrowing money from Friedrich Engels, pawning his wife's silver, and writing in the British Museum reading room. He outlived three of his seven children. His masterwork, Capital, took him 25 years to write; he finished only the first volume before he died. His wife Jenny von Westphalen gave up a comfortable bourgeois life to share his poverty and believed in him completely for 38 years. He died two months after she did, of a lung abscess, in London in 1883. His graveside eulogy was attended by 11 people. Within 35 years, a revolution carried out in his name had taken power in Russia, and his writings had become the most politically consequential texts since the Bible.
March 14, 1883
143 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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