Karl Marx - BBC Radio 4 In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher
Marx developed the theories upon which modern communism is based and is considered the founding father of economic history and sociology.

Marx set down his ideas in The Communist Manifesto(1848) and Das Kapital ((3 vol., 1861, 1885, 1894) arguing that economic relations determined all other features of a society, including its ideas.

He also outlined the goal of Marxism - the creation of social and economic utopia by the revolution of the proletariat which would "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state."

All class boundaries would be destroyed and each individual would find personal fulfilment, having no need for the bourgeois institutions of religion or family. Marx himself was an atheist, coining the phrase, "Religion is the opium of the people"

Marx continued to express views about class struggle and bourgeois oppression throughout his life, despite being exiled from his homeland and coping with both his own illness and the death of his children.

Most modern socialist theories are drawn from his work but Karl Marx has had a wider influence touching on many areas of human thought and life such as politics, economics, philosophy, and literature.

bour⋅geois

1  [boor-zhwah, boor-zhwah; Fr. boor-zhwa] Show IPA noun, 
plural -geois, adjective

–noun

1.	a member of the middle class.

2.	a person whose political, economic, and social opinions are believed to be determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability.

3.	a shopkeeper or merchant.

–adjective

4.	belonging to, characteristic of, or consisting of the middle class.

5.	conventional; middle-class.

6.	dominated or characterized by materialistic pursuits or concerns.