Karl Marx (1818–1883) was raised at first in Bonn, Germany, and later in Berlin. After graduating from the university, Marx and his close friend Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) worked as journalists. In 1848 they wrote the Communist Manifesto and, in the aftermath of unsuccessful liberal revolutions in Germany in that year, were forced to flee Germany. They settled in London, where Engels’s family had connections and Engels could take care of Marx. Marx did not return to Germany until shortly before his death. In London he worked as a correspondent for the New York Tribune and wrote his massive, major work,
Das Kapital . Marx combined a sweeping view of history with an astonishing appetite for the minutiae of economics. At its most basic level, his theory of politics, as of all other human activity, was that it is determined solely by economic processes and can be understood by economic analysis.