of the greatest thinkers of the 19th century.

His writings have inspired revolutions,

and generated centuries of fierce debate.

Born in Prussia, now Germany,

in May 1818, Marx believed that capitalism,

which was in its infancy at the time, had serious flaws.

Marx claimed that in pursuit of profit,

capitalists would encourage their ideology

that work is good, leisure is bad,

and material things will make us happy.

Embracing mass production,

depriving workers of job satisfaction.

At the same time, exploiting the working class.

He became involved in the Communist League,

a small group of intellectuals who wanted

to abolish the class system and spread wealth equally.

Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto

in 1847, with his benefactor Friedrich Engels,

laying out the Marxist vision of a society

where wealth is distributed evenly.

Property is owned publicly, and education is free for all.

But Marx was little-known and little-read at the time.

When he died in 1883, only 11 people

attended his funeral.

After his death, his ideas flourished.

Based on the theory of Marxism came communism,

the realization of a stateless society where all are equal.

Communism became a global movement,

but the utopian ideal of a fair

and equal society failed to materialize.

Communism tyrannized and impoverished it subjects.

And slaughtered them in the tens of millions.

Today, capitalism dominates the world.

But many of Marx's criticisms have never been more relevant.

Today, the global disparity between rich

and poor is startling.

Marx predicted that capitalism would lead

to the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor.

He was right.

He also predicted that capitalism would lead

to boom and bust economics.

Marx predicted that capitalism would lead to globalization,

and that a handful of firms would

have huge market dominance.

However,

Marx underestimated the ability of

capitalism to make everybody richer

by making products much cheaper.

Since the 1980s, the number of people

in absolute poverty has fallen by about one billion.

He also got wrong the capacity

of capitalism to reform itself by creating welfare states

that redistributed wealth through taxation.

Although there is a lot to learn from Marx,

his solution was far worse than the disease.

At the same time, it can't be said

that today's capitalism, dominated by immense inequality

and financial crises has triumphed.