19. A Philosopher on the Move
The authorities raided Karl Marx’s school in the 1830s, confiscated writings deemed subversive from its library, and forced changes in the teaching staff. Marx’s early years of higher education were marked by poor grades, imprisonment for drunkenness, riotous behavior, and general rowdiness, before he finally buckled down to serious study of the law and philosophy. He was strongly influenced by Hegel, and joined a radical student group known as the Young Hegelians. That marked the beginning of his transformation into a radical, and eventually revolutionary, thinker.
He received a doctorate in 1841, but his politics kept him from getting a teaching job, so he took to journalism. Within a year, however, his newspaper was suppressed, and he was forced to move to Paris and the relatively freer French environment. There, he met Freidrich Engels, and the two developed a friendship and began a collaboration that would revolutionize the world. In 1845, the Prussians pressured the French to expel Marx, so he moved to Belgium, where he founded a correspondence committee to link European socialists.