Karl Marx was born into a Jewish family in imperial Prussia. Considered too radical to be given an academic post at university, he became a crusading journalist at a left-wing newspaper before being exiled to Paris, then to Brussels, and finally settling with his family in London. As the intellectual father of communism, Marx's impact on history is massive. It began with The Communist Manifesto.

Friedrich Engels worked in his family's cotton manufacturing business, but in his private time mixed with radicals. His book The Condition of the Working Class in England was an exposé of the terrible factory conditions and child labour of the time. Engels was Marx's lifelong collaborator, and he edited the unfinished volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's death.

Tom Butler-Bowdon is Series Editor of the Capstone Classics series, and has provided Introductions for Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Machiavelli's The Prince, Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It, and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he is also the author of 50 Economics Classics (2017) and 50 Politics Classics (2015).

www.butler-bowdon.com