He was an advocate for the poor and oppressed, yet he tried to keep up the appearance of the bourgeois. He wrote about capital, but he never accumulated capital. He dreamed of overthrowing capitalism, but he accepted money from wealthy capitalists when he had none. He embraced Hegelian thought which eventually encouraged his nonconformist attitude and eventually skepticism for Hegel himself. .
In October 1842, Marx became the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper backed by industrialists. Marx's articles, especially those on economic questions, caused the Prussian government to close the paper. Marx then emigrated to France. .
Arriving in Paris in the latter part of 1843, Marx made contact with groups of émigré German workers and with various sects of French socialists. During his first few months in Paris, Marx became a communist and began work on the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), which remained unpublished until the 1930s. It was also in Paris that Marx began his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Shortly after meeting, Marx and Engels worked together to produce A German Ideology. .
Marx wrote prolifically. His work ranged from poems to newspaper articles, a comedy, and numerous books. Some of Marx's major works include Das Kapital (3 vol., 1867-94), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), The Class Struggles in France (1848), and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), just to name a few. Marx and Engels published many works, both individually and in collaboration with each other. Together, Marx and Engels wrote The Holy Family (1845), The German Ideology (1845), Communist Manifesto (1848), and much more. There were also several works of Marx that were completed by Engels after Marx's death. Readers from California to Japan know Marx's work, and his book Capital is said to be the most talked about but least read book in history.