Karl Marx was a university student who fought duels, a journalist who got expelled from multiple countries, a philosopher who spent decades in poverty while writing the book he believed would overthrow capitalism, and a father who watched three of his children die in the squalor of London exile. Das Kapital was not written in an ivory tower — it was written in misery.

This episode traces Marx from his comfortable bourgeois origins through his radicalization, his partnership with Engels, the writing of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and the personal suffering that accompanied the most consequential political philosophy of the modern era.

• Marx’s bourgeois upbringing, university dueling, and early radicalization in Prussian journalism
• The lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels and the writing of The Communist Manifesto
• Decades of London poverty, family tragedy, and the grinding labor of writing Das Kapital
• How Marx’s ideas shaped the twentieth century — revolutions, Cold War, and ongoing debate