KARL MARX AND MARXISM
http://www.suu.edu/faculty/ping/pdf/KARLMARXANDMARXISM.pdf
The influence of Karl Marx (18181883) has been prodigious. During the 1980s, people who called themselves Marxists or who lived under Marxist governments numbered about one half of the planet's inhabitants. The Chinese alone account for one billion; although, until the collapse of Communism, the Russian claimed to be the leading Marxists. There are or rather were, more Marxists in the world than Christians. We should remember that the Soviet version of Communism was but one aspect of Marxism. The historian Walter Laquer joked that by the 1980s, there were probably more believing Marxists in American universities than in the entire Soviet Union. By any objective reckoning, Karl Marx was the most influential modern thinker. He was certainly the greatest social scientist of the last two centuries. Marx most be numbered among the founders of the modern study of history, sociology, and economics. But he is most often remembered as the prophet of proletarian revolution.