“Workers of the world, unite!”: Remembering Karl Marx on his 207th birth anniversary

Today, May 5, marks the birth anniversary of Karl Marx, one of the most influential philosophers in the world.

Marx is best known for conceptualising the theory of Scientific Socialism and advocating for Communism along with his frequent collaborator Friedrich Engels, which would later be defined as “Marxism”

He called for workers to seize the means of production and extract the full value of their labour

Under his vision of communism, society would be classless, stateless and moneyless, where people are not exploited for their labour

While Marx was born in the Kingdom of Prussia, he spent most of his life outside his country of birth due to being persecuted politically. He died a stateless man

Most of his work, including The Communist Manifesto, Das Capital, and Wage Labour and Capital, functions as an analysis and critique of existing wage and social relations under capitalism

Karl Marx is seen as one of the three architects of modern social science, and has been cited as one of the 19th century's three masters of the "school of suspicion"

Marxist thought continues to serve as an inspiration for several liberation struggles and working class movements, especially in Asian, Latin American and African countries