2. E.g., Karl Marx, “The Union of Believers with Christ according to John 15:1-14, Showing its Basis and Essence, its Absolute Necessity, and its Effects,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023, https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/index.htm.

3. For an account of Marx’s university life, see “Letter from Karl Marx to his Father in Trier,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/letters/37_11_10.htm.

4. Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2000), 14-17.

5. Ibid., 32.

6. Henry F. Mins, “Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation,” Science and Society 12, no. 1, A Centenary of Marxism (Winter 1948): 157, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40399880.

7. Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 26, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315888910.

8. Wheen, 146.

9. Ibid., 149.

10. Roger Paden, “Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists,” Utopian Studies 13, no. 2 (2002): 67–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20718467.

11. David Leopold, “The Structure of Marx and Engels’ Considered Account of Utopian Socialism,” History of Political Thought 26, no. 3 (2005): 443–66, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26221712.

12. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (NY: Harper & Row, 1988), 60, https://www.academia.edu/12009844/Intellectuals_From_Marx_and_Tolstoy_to_Sartre_and_Chomsky_by_Paul_Johnson.

13. Ibid., 62-3.

14. Franck Fischbach, “Marx and Utopia,” in Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives, ed. S. D. Chrostowska and James D. Ingram (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 117–25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/chro17958.7.

15. Ralph Colp, Jr., “The Contacts between Karl Marx and Charles Darwin,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 2 (April 1974): 329-38, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708767.

16. Karl Marx, “Preface,” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023,  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm.

17. Marx never developed a coherent definition of “state,” and historians’ interpretations differ. See Clyde W. Barrow, “The Marx Problem in Marxian State Theory,” Science & Society 64, no. 1 (2000): 87–118, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40403826; also Ted W. Meckstroth, “Marx and the Logic of Social Theory: The Capitalist State,” Science & Society 64, no. 1 (2000): 55–86, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40403825. There seems be general agreement that Marx thinks the state is 1) likely to align more closely with the interests of the capitalists 2) is alienated from the interests of society, especially the working class and 3) either arises from, or is intentionally and instrumentally used by, the dominant class. 

18. “Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx: Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed June 29, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm.

19. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed June 29, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm. Referred to in the text by its more familiar title, The Communist Manifesto.

20. Karl Marx, “The Class Struggles in France,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/class-sf/ch03.htm.  Marx published this series of articles in 1850.

21. The phrase “withers away” or “dies out” is associated with Engels, although Marx also addressed the topic. Marx does not mean to suggest that there will be no government or social organization whatsoever, but he does argue that the contemporary bureaucratic state will disappear and that the dictatorship of the proletariat – the political life of fully realized communism – will not look or act like a state in the traditional understanding of the term. See Mehmet Tabak, “Marx’s Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship Revisited,” Science & Society 64, no. 3 (2000): 333–56, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40404782.

22. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm#:~:text=In%20this%20sense%2C%20the%20theory,sentence%3A%20Abolition%20of%20private%20property.

23. Ibid.

24. Neither the Russian nor the Chinese revolutions truly represented the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, since the bourgeoisie were only a tiny fraction of the population, 80-90% of which was peasantry. In both cases, the peasantry proved much more difficult to subdue.

25. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.

26. Ibid. Spelling kept the same as the original source.

27. Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023,  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/.

28. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm.

29. Leopold, 464.

30. See “The Tools of Communism” in Section 1.

31. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Karl Marx, “Preface,” A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed February 8, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm. Interestingly, this and many more of Marx’s most famous phrases were coined by other writers, see Johnson, 56.

35. Ibid., accessed February 8, 2023,  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm.

36. N. Lobkowicz, “Karl Marx’s Attitude toward Religion,” The Review of Politics 26, no. 3 (July 1964): 319-352, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1405231.

37. Russel P. Moroziuk, “The Role of Atheism in Marxian Philosophy,” Studies in Soviet Thought 14, no. 3-4 (September-December 1974): 191-212, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20098613.

38. The societies where organic communist revolutions have not occurred, despite Marx’s predictions, are the modern, liberal, market-based societies of Europe that Marx wrote in and about. Communist revolutions have occurred in imperial Russia, in post-colonial Southeast Asia, and in China after the Century of Humiliation. In most of the Latin American and African states that have experienced communist rule, it occurred after a period of unpopular dictatorial rule and/or an encounter with colonialism.

39. Peter Singer, “What is Karl Marx’s legacy 200 years on from his birth?” World Economic Forum, May 15, 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/200-years-of-karl-marx/.

40. Joshua Muravchik, “Socialism Fails Every Time,” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-fails-every-time-11554851786.

41. Marx and Engels, Manifesto, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.