Karl Marx

Karl Marx was an economist who wrote an influential book called "Das Kapital" along with a fellow named Friedrich Engels. Marx felt that it was historically inevitable that workers, who are paid only a small fraction of the value of what they produce, would rise up and overthrow the wealthy political leaders and company CEOs who were exploiting them. Whether or not Marx was correct, his economic and political theories have been very influential in both in economic theory and as an influence in revolutionary movements throughout the world. Just as Adam Smith's view of a pure capitalistic free-market society has never existed, no society has ever managed to achieve the purely communist system that Marx predicted.

Marx is one of the most hated and feared boogymen of your average conservative, who suspects that there is a communist hiding under his bed waiting to grab his ankles when he gets up in the night to take a pee. While some thought that conservatives might wake up once the Cold War ended and realize that there are more dangerous things to fear than communism (like a president who taps your phone without a warrant or one who invades other countries at random), they still resort to labeling anyone who is the the left of Hitler a "communist" or "Marxist".