Karl Marx, the most infleuntial and effective philosopher of modern history, and principal originator of "scientific socialism", was born in 1818, in the town of Trier in Germany. His father had been a lawyer, and at the age of seventeen Karl had entered the university of Bonn, to study law himself. He later transfered himself to the University of Berlin, and he eventually was awarded a Ph.D. in philosophy from the university of Jena. Marx, then turned himself to journalism, and for a while he was the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. But his radical political views got him into trouble, and he then moved to Paris, and there he met several leading socialists and his life-long friend and collabarator Fredrich Engels. Though each wrote several books in his own name, their intellectual collaboration was so close that there combined output can reasonably be treated as a single joint achievement. Indeed, Marx and Engels are being treated as a joint entry in this website, through listed under Marx's name alone, as he is generally (and I think rightly) considered to have been the dominant partner. Marx was soon expelled from France, and then he moved to Brussels, and there he had published his first significance work in 1847, The Poverty of Philosophy. The following year, he and Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto, to there most widely read work. Later that year, he returned to Cologne, and was expelled from there, and he then moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life. Althrough he earned some money as a journalist, Marx spent the bulk of his time in London doing research and writing books on politics and economics. The first volume of Das Kapital , Marx 's most important work, appeared in 1867. When Marx died in 1883, the other two volumes had not been completed; they were edited and published by Engels from the manuscripts that Marx left behind. Marx's writings form the theoretical basis of Communism, as well as many modern forms of socialism. And in the following century, Communist governments were established in Russia and China; and in dozen other countries movements based on his teachings have attempted to gain power. The activities of these Marxist parties have included, propaganda, assasinations, terrorism, and rebellions in order to gain power, and bloody purges after reaching power kept the world in turmoil for decades and have caused roughly 100 million deaths! No philosopher in history, has had a great impact on the world, in the century after he wrote. You may believe it as I do , that Marxism has been both economically and politically disasterous; but surely it has not been an insignificant movement. Indeed, the only reason why I have ranked Marx higher in this website is because, he must share the blame of what occured under notable figures as Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1975 Pol Pot, leader of the Cambodian Communist Party seized power, and during his reign, around about 2million people perished , in a country with a population of 8 million, and worst was that most of his victims were mainly intellectials and landowners, who were driven out from the city, and were systermatically put to death. The system Pol Pot built in Cambodia, would certainly have not been approved by Marx , but I am sure he would have certainly accepted the Soviet Block. He wrote about concepts such as the Hegelian dialectic and surplus value of labor, and such abstractions seem to have had little effect on the day-to-day policies of the Russian or Chinese governments. It has often been pointed out that the Marxist theory of economics is badly in error. Certainly, many of Marx specific prediction have turned out to be incorrect. For, example he predicted that in capitalistic countries the working people would become progessively poorer as time went on; clearly this has not happened. Marx also predicted that the middle-class would be eliminated, with most of it's members falling back into the prolertariat., and only a few rising into capitalist class. Obiviously, this has not happened either. He also seemed to have believed that increased mechanization would diminish the profits of the capitalists, a prediction that is not only wrong, but rather foolish. Whether his economic theories are right or wrong, this has little to do with his infleunce. A philosophers importance lies not in the correctness of his views, but in whether his ideas move people to action. Judged on that basis, Marx was unquestionably of enormous importance. Marxist movements have generally stressed four main ideas: (1) A few rich persons live in great wealth, while most workers live in comparative poverty. (2) The way to rectify this injustice is to set up a socialist system; that is, a system where the means of production are owned by the government rather than by private individuals. (3) In most cases, the only practical way to establish this system is by a violent revolution. (4) To preserve this socialist system, the dictatorship of the Communist party must be maintained for a considerable time. Each of the first three ideas had been clearly stated long before Marx. The fourth statement is derived in part from Marx's idea of "the dictatorship of the proleterian". However , the duration of the Soviet dictatorship was rather of Lenin and Stalin, rather than being the writings of Marx. While there is some truth in such claims, they are surely much too extreme. Lenin , for example, did not merely claim to follow Marx's teachings; he had actually read them , and he fully accepted them, and he believed he was following them. The same is true with Mao Zedong and many other Communist leaders. True, Marx's ideas may have been misunderstood or reinterpreted; however, the same could br said for the ideas of Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad. If all the main policies of the various Marxist governments and movements had been directly derived from the writings of Karl Marx, he would be even higher on this list. Some of Marx's ideas-for example, his interesting notion of "the economic interpretation of history"-are apt to remain infleuntial even if Communism itself dies out. A century after Marx's death , there were well over a billion persons who were nominally his followers. This was a greater number of adherents than any other ideology has ever had-not just in absolute numbers, but also a fraction of the total world population of the world. That fact, lead many Communists to hope (and anti-Communists to fear) that Marxism will eventually in the future will triumph. In the long term, Marx is a important significant figure than either Napoleon or Hitler: The impact of those men was both briefer than Marx's and less extensive geographically.