Marx contributed the central propositions of the Manifesto, which embody the materialist conception of history, or historical materialism. This theory was later explicitly formulated in Marx's Critique of Political Economy (1859). The Manifesto's propositions are that in every historical epoch the prevailing economic system by which the necessities of life are produced determines the form of societal organization and the political and intellectual history of the epoch; and that the history of society is a history of struggles between exploiting and exploited, that is, between ruling and oppressed, social classes. From these premises, Marx drew the conclusion in the Manifesto that the capitalist class would be overthrown and that it would be eliminated by a worldwide working-class revolution andk replaced by a classless society. The Manifesto influenced all subsequent communist literature and revolutionary thought generally; it has been translated into many languages and published in hundreds of millions of copies.
III Political Exile .
print section .
In 1848 revolutions occurred in France and Germany, and the Belgian government, fearful that the revolutionary tide would engulf Belgium, banished Marx. He went first to Paris and then to the Rhineland. In Cologne he established and edited a communist periodical, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and engaged in organizing activities. In 1849 Marx was arrested and tried in Cologne on a charge of incitement to armed insurrection; he was acquitted but was expelled from Germany, and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed. Later in the same year he was again banished from France; he spent the remainder of his life in London.
In England Marx devoted himself to study and writing and to efforts to build an international communist movement. During this period he wrote a number of works that are regarded as classics of communist theory.