In their next work, they demonstrated their materialistic conception of history but the book found no publisher and “remained unknown during its author’s lifetimes.”

It is during his years in Brussels that Marx really developed his views and established his “intellectual standing.” From December of 1847 to January of 1848, Engels and Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, a document outlining 10 immediate measures towards Communism, “ranging from a rogressive income tax and the abolition of inheritances to free education for all children.”

When the Revolution erupted in Europe in 1848, Marx was invited to Paris just in time to escape expulsion by the Belgian government. He became unpopular to German exiles when, while in Paris, he opposed Georg Hewegh’s project to organize a German legion to invade and “liberate the Fatherland.” After traveling back to Cologne, Marx called for democracy and agreed with Engels that the Communist League should be disbanded. During this time, Marx got into trouble with the government; he was indicted on charges that he advocated that people not pay taxes. However, after defending himself in his trial, he was acquitted unanimously. On May 16, 1849, Marx was “banished as an alien” by the Prussian government.

Marx then went to London. There, he rejoined the Communist League and became more bold in his revolutionary policy. He advocated that the people try to make the revolution “permanent” and that they should avoid subservience to the bourgeois peoples. The faction that he belonged to ridiculed his ideas and he stopped attending meetings of the London Communists, working on the defense of 11 communists arrested in Cologne, instead. He wrote quite a few works during this time, including an essay entitled “Der Achtzenhnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte” (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) and also a pamphlet written on the behalf of the 11 communists he was defending
in Cologne.

From 1850 to 1864, Marx lived in poverty and “spiritual pain,” only taking a job once. He and his family were evicted from their apartment and several of his children died, his son, Guido, who Marx called “a sacrifice to bourgeois misery” and a daughter named Franziska. They were so poor that his wife had to borrow money for her coffin.

Frederich Engels was the one who gave Marx and his family money to survive on during these years. His only other source of money was his job as the European correspondent for The New York Tribune, writing editorials and columns analyzing everything in the “political universe.” Marx published his first book on economic theory in 1859, called A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Marx’s “political isolation” ended when he joined the International Working Men’s Association. Although he was neither the founder nor the leader of this organization, he “became its leading spirit” and as the corresponding secretary for Germany, he attended all meetings. Marx’s distinction as a political figure really came in 1870 with the Paris Commune.