Karl Marx was born in Germany on the 5th May, 1818. He is known as the founder of communism as a political ideology although his own work focused developing a critique of capitalism rather than the creation of a prescriptive political perspective. Marx, with the help of his lifelong friend Fredrick Engels, produced a host of essays and books on politics, philosopher and the economy. His most famous work is Capital, several volumes of which were not published until after his death in 1883. Marx’s economic theories and political insights continue to be relevant and highly influential to this day; an entire intellectual tradition - Marxism - has developed from his writings.