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Pearson, Heath --- "Karl Marx (181-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95)" [1999] ELECD 43; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 36

Section Title: Karl Marx (181-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95)

Author(s): Pearson, Heath

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

36 Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels
(1820-95)
Heath Pearson


Introduction
Karl Marx was born in Trier, a Rhenish town then belonging to Prussia. At
the age of seventeen he entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn;
the year following, he transferred to the Law Faculty at the University of
Berlin and, while he continued his training in jurisprudence there, he also
pursued his interests in philosophy and history. In the end those collateral
interests prevailed, and his doctoral degree was granted in philosophy. Thwarted
in his career ambitions in the academy, the young Marx wrote for and edited
several opposition newspapers. In 1842 he met Friedrich Engels, the scion of
an industrial family, who was to be his lifelong collaborator and supporter.
The two would spend most of the rest of their lives abroad, in England,
France and Belgium, under conditions of explicit or self-imposed exile from
their native Germany. Marx, always the towering figure of the pair (even after
his death), read and wrote prodigiously, occasionally as a newspaper corre-
spondent but more commonly as a freelance critic. In addition, he and Engels
both tried their hand at political organization and communist agitation.
Marx and Engels were not the first scholars to attempt an economic
analysis of law; nor, arguably, were they the best. Neither one held an
advanced degree in economics or in law and, as self-avowed revolutionar-
ies, they were studiously ignored by most professionals in both fields. But
...