The Classics of Marxism

Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writing The Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin (1870-1924), was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He played a leading role in the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917.

Leon Trotsky was a Marxist writer, theorist and leader. He organized the insurrection of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and then was the commander of the Red Army in the subsequent civil war. After Lenin's death, Trotsky led the Left Opposition against Stalin's bureaucratic counterrevolution, and was exiled in a series of countries before being assassinated in Mexico in 1940.