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Marx: Genius of the Modern World

Bettany Hughes

Rob Cowling

David Upshal

Genius of the Modern World: Episode 1: Marx

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Marx

Episode 1

Episode 1: Marx

Genius of the Modern World

BBC Four - Genius of the Modern World, Marx

Bettany Hughes investigates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx.

Bettany Hughes retraces the lives of thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern world. Drawing on expert opinion and new evidence, she looks at Karl Marx and his groundbreaking ideas.

Bettany Hughes investigates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx. Born to an affluent Prussian family, Marx became an angry, idealistic radical, constantly on the run for his political agitating and incendiary writing. In Paris, he first formulated his explosive analysis of capitalism and its corrosive effects on human nature. In Brussels, he co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Frederick Engels. In London, his obsessive theorizing dragged his family into poverty and tragedy. 

Marx's masterpiece Das Capital was largely overlooked in his lifetime, and only 11 people attended his funeral. Yet his ideas would generate one of the most influential, and divisive, ideologies in history. Drawing on expert opinion and new evidence, Bettany reveals the flesh-and-blood man and his groundbreaking ideas.

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The lives of three great thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern world.

Historian Bettany Hughes retraces the lives of three great thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern world - Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

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