Karl Marx was born in 1818, in Trier, Prussia. He later moved to England, and died in London in 1883.
Marx was an educator at the University of Bonn, University of Berlin and University of Jena as a philosopher, in which he believed in Marxism (which he founded (obviously)).
Marx was a member of many political parties, inluding:
The Communist Correspondence Committee, until 1847
The Communist League, from 1847-1852
The International Workingmen's Association, from 1864-1872
Marx authored many books, the most famous of which being The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital in which he outlined his political and philosophical ideology. These two books influenced Lenin greatly.
The main beliefs behind Marxism are that:
Capitalism creates class divides and conflict between the wealthy classes (bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (proletariat) that provide the labour.
Society will develop through the internal conflict between these classes, as he predicted that the proletariat would develop "class consciousness" and revolt against the bourgeoisie, replacing the capitalist system with the socialist mode of production.
Following this development, the society would soon become established as a classless, communist society.
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Vladimir Lenin
Vladmir Lenin was born to an upper middle class family in Simbirsk, within the Russian Empire 1870. By the time he had died in 1924 (and long before that), the empire had been renamed the Soviet Union.
Lenin worked as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union from late 1917 until his death, where he was succeeded by Alexei Rykov.
Lenin was also a member of many (Tsar-opposing) politial parties:
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, from 1898-1903
Bolshevik Branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, from 1903-1912
Bolshevik Party, from 1912-1918
Russian Communist Party (also Bolsheviks), from 1918-1924
He also authored What is to be Done in 1912, and State and Revolution in 1917.
Following his brothers execution, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics and was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for protesting against the Tsarist government. Then in 1893, he moved to St Petersburg and became a senior Marxist activist before being exiled for three years due to his rebellious behaviour.
After his exile, Lenin moved to Western Europe, where he remained a prominent marxist theorist and, after the failed 1905 Revolution, campaigned for the First World War to become a Europe-wide proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism.
Lenin then returned to Russia followin the 1917 February revolution, where he would play a leading role in the October Revolution, overthowing the provisional government that had taken the Tsars place and establishing a Bolshevik government.
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