An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln
Robin Blackburnteaches at the New School in New York and the University of Essex in the UK. He is the author of many books, includingThe Making of New World Slavery,The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery,Age Shock,Banking on Death, andThe American Crucible.Abraham Lincolnwas the sixteenth president of the United States and the author of several seminal speeches and writings, including the Gettysburg Address. He died in 1865.Karl Marxwas born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writingThe Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opusCapital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.Frederick Engelswas born in 1820, in the German city of Barmen. Brought up as a devout Calvinist he moved to England in 1842 to work in his father’s Manchester textile firm. After joining the fight against the counter revolution in Germany in 1848 he returned to Manchester and the family business, finally settling there in 1850. In subsequent years he provided financial support for Marx and edited the second and third volumes ofCapital. He died whilst working on the fourth volume in 1895.