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German philosopher born in Trier (Rhineland) in 1818. It has been said of him: "In the nineteenth century he was the thinker who had by far the most direct, deliberate and powerful influence on humanity" (Isaiah Berlin). Sensitive to the social problems of his time, he was influenced by the doctrines of utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, and by the theories of political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which he attempted to surpass.
Marx's thought is essentially defined in opposition to Hegelian idealism, although he takes from it the dynamic conception of reality and the principles of dialectics, reinterpreting them in the light of a materialist conception. His fundamental criticism of Hegel is that Hegel only perceived abstract spiritual development, when the idea is nothing more than "matter, translated and transformed in the mind of man," simultaneously provoking a shift in philosophical action, moving it away from the purely theoretical domain and inserting it into the sphere of practical intervention – "until now, philosophers have only concerned themselves with interpreting the world from various perspectives. However, the problem lies in being able to transform it."

Rejecting the Hegelian transposition of empirical fact to the metaphysical plane, he argues that it is not man's consciousness that determines his being, but his social being that determines his consciousness. It is from this premise that Marx constructs the system of historical materialism, according to which economic processes are at the base of all human evolution, considering all other sociocultural manifestations as mere ideological superstructures, strictly determined by the prevailing relations of production.
The history of societies is seen as a long dialectical process in which the oppressed classes, victims of unequal production relations, revolt against the dominant classes, establishing a new economic order. Class struggle, therefore, runs throughout the entire course of humanity, from antiquity (a slave-owning society in which the slave opposes the free man), through feudal society (opposition between lord and serf), to capitalist society, in which the proletarian revolution, through the abolition of private property and the collectivization of the means of production, will suppress all antagonisms, establishing communism and a classless society.

Marx focused particularly on the formation and essence of capitalism, considering that it is based on the undue appropriation of surplus value generated by labor, within a logic of accumulation and concentration of wealth that completely disregards the social function of labor and reduces the proletariat to a state of alienation in which work ceases to be a factor of personal fulfillment. Religion, which he classifies as "the opium of the people," is associated with this process of alienation, promising the proletariat otherworldly satisfaction in exchange for their submission to the established order.
Marx died in Berlin in 1883. His system, developed largely in collaboration with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and imbued with reformist and emancipatory social goals, decisively marked all of contemporary political philosophy.