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For fuck's sake read something other than the Manifesto.

Marx wrote 2 and a half volumes of what was at the time the most up to date state of classical economic theory, incorporating all of the previous theories of classical economy, and providing further real world scientific economic evidence (with what was available at the time) for theories that had been previously established. Literally, his economic proof for the labor theory of value is literally just providing concrete evidence for what was at the time Adam Smith's labor theory of value, responding to the emerging neo-classical liberal theorists that sought to obscure the insights of the foundational works of Smith and Ricardo, the neo-classicals have just convinced you that it was Marx's because Marx=bad/dangerous. Marx was literally the first person to do this kind of in-depth non-vibes based political-economic analysis and it is because of this he was recognized as a genius by others who didn't seek to obscure the economic relationship between labor and capital.

His activism and agitation was driven by his belief in the scientific progression of socialism, that capitalism can either progress towards socialism and empower and free the productive class or it will stagnate to barbarism and simply enrich the ownership class of whom the classical mechanisms of the market that drive production will break down into a monopoly and renters economy, stagnating production and growth, based on the very economic mechanisms that were first elucidated by Smith, and then expanded on by Ricardo and Marx.