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Who was Karl Marx?

Karl Marx was a German philosopher during the 19th century. He worked primarily in the realm of political philosophy and was a famous advocate for communism . He cowrote The Communist Manifesto and was the author of Das Kapital , which together formed the basis of Marxism .

Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883, when he was 64, after succumbing to a bout of bronchitis. Not owning any land when he died, he was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Originally, his headstone was nondescript, but in 1954 the Communist Party of Great Britain etched the stone with “Workers of all lands unite,” the last line of The Communist Manifesto , along with a quote from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (1845).

What was Karl Marx’s family like?

Karl Marx was one of nine children. When he got older, he married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen. The two had seven children together, four of whom died before reaching adolescence. Because of Marx’s anti-capital core beliefs, his family was impoverished for much of their lives.

Karl Marx (born May 5, 1818, Trier , Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died March 14, 1883, London , England) was a revolutionary, sociologist , historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels ) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto , the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement’s most important book, Das Kapital . These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism . ( See also socialism ; communism .)

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Karl Heinrich Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children. His father, Heinrich, a successful lawyer, was a man of the Enlightenment , devoted to Kant and Voltaire , who took part in agitations for a constitution in Prussia . His mother, born Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and were descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl was born, his father—probably because his professional career required it—was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church. Karl was baptized when he was six years old. Although as a youth Karl was influenced less by religion than by the critical, sometimes radical social policies of the Enlightenment, his Jewish background exposed him to prejudice and discrimination that may have led him to question the role of religion in society and contributed to his desire for social change .

Marx was educated from 1830 to 1835 at the high school in Trier. Suspected of harbouring liberal teachers and pupils, the school was under police surveillance. Marx’s writings during this period exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and a longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity. In October 1835 he matriculated at the University of Bonn. The courses he attended were exclusively in the humanities, in such subjects as Greek and Roman mythology and the history of art. He participated in customary student activities, fought a duel, and spent a day in jail for being drunk and disorderly. He presided at the Tavern Club, which was at odds with the more aristocratic student associations, and joined a poets’ club that included some political activists. A politically rebellious student culture was, indeed, part of life at Bonn . Many students had been arrested; some were still being expelled in Marx’s time, particularly as a result of an effort by students to disrupt a session of the Federal Diet at Frankfurt. Marx, however, left Bonn after a year and in October 1836 enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy .

Marx’s crucial experience at Berlin was his introduction to Hegel ’s philosophy, regnant there, and his adherence to the Young Hegelians . At first he felt a repugnance toward Hegel’s doctrines; when Marx fell sick it was partially, as he wrote his father, “from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested.” The Hegelian pressure in the revolutionary student culture was powerful, however, and Marx joined a society called the Doctor Club, whose members were intensely involved in the new literary and philosophical movement. Their chief figure was Bruno Bauer , a young lecturer in theology, who was developing the idea that the Christian Gospels were a record not of history but of human fantasies arising from emotional needs and that Jesus had not been a historical person. Marx enrolled in a course of lectures given by Bauer on the prophet Isaiah . Bauer taught that a new social catastrophe “more tremendous” than that of the advent of Christianity was in the making. The Young Hegelians began moving rapidly toward atheism and also talked vaguely of political action.

The Prussian government, fearful of the subversion latent in the Young Hegelians, soon undertook to drive them from the universities. Bauer was dismissed from his post in 1839. Marx’s “most intimate friend” of this period, Adolph Rutenberg, an older journalist who had served a prison sentence for his political radicalism, pressed for a deeper social involvement. By 1841 the Young Hegelians had become left republicans. Marx’s studies, meanwhile, were lagging. Urged by his friends, he submitted a doctoral dissertation to the university at Jena, which was known to be lax in its academic requirements, and received his degree in April 1841. His thesis analyzed in a Hegelian fashion the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus . More distinctively, it sounded a note of Promethean defiance:

Philosophy makes no secret of it. Prometheus’ admission: “In sooth all gods I hate,” is its own admission, its own motto against all gods,…Prometheus is the noblest saint and martyr in the calendar of philosophy.

In 1841 Marx, together with other Young Hegelians, was much influenced by the publication of Das Wesen des Christentums (1841; The Essence of Christianity ) by Ludwig Feuerbach . Its author, to Marx’s mind, successfully criticized Hegel, an idealist who believed that matter or existence was inferior to and dependent upon mind or spirit, from the opposite, or materialist, standpoint, showing how the “Absolute Spirit” was a projection of “the real man standing on the foundation of nature.” Henceforth Marx’s philosophical efforts were toward a combination of Hegel’s dialectic —the idea that all things are in a continual process of change resulting from the conflicts between their contradictory aspects—with Feuerbach’s materialism , which placed material conditions above ideas.

In January 1842 Marx began contributing to a newspaper newly founded in Cologne , the Rheinische Zeitung . It was the liberal democratic organ of a group of young merchants, bankers, and industrialists; Cologne was the centre of the most industrially advanced section of Prussia. To this stage of Marx’s life belongs an essay on the freedom of the press. Since he then took for granted the existence of absolute moral standards and universal principles of ethics , he condemned censorship as a moral evil that entailed spying into people’s minds and hearts and assigned to weak and malevolent mortals powers that presupposed an omniscient mind. He believed that censorship could have only evil consequences.

On October 15, 1842, Marx became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung . As such, he was obliged to write editorials on a variety of social and economic issues, ranging from the housing of the Berlin poor and the theft by peasants of wood from the forests to the new phenomenon of communism. He found Hegelian idealism of little use in these matters. At the same time he was becoming estranged from his Hegelian friends for whom shocking the bourgeois was a sufficient mode of social activity. Marx, friendly at this time to the “liberal-minded practical men” who were “struggling step-by-step for freedom within constitutional limits,” succeeded in trebling his newspaper’s circulation and making it a leading journal in Prussia. Nevertheless, Prussian authorities suspended it for being too outspoken, and Marx agreed to coedit with the liberal Hegelian Arnold Ruge a new review, the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Yearbooks”), which was to be published in Paris.

First, however, in June 1843 Marx, after an engagement of seven years, married Jenny von Westphalen. Jenny was an attractive, intelligent, and much-admired woman, four years older than Karl; she came of a family of military and administrative distinction. Her half-brother later became a highly reactionary Prussian minister of the interior. Her father, a follower of the French socialist Saint-Simon, was fond of Karl, though others in her family opposed the marriage. Marx’s father also feared that Jenny was destined to become a sacrifice to the demon that possessed his son.

Four months after their marriage, the young couple moved to Paris, which was then the centre of socialist thought and of the more extreme sects that went under the name of communism. There, Marx first became a revolutionary and a communist and began to associate with communist societies of French and German workingmen. Their ideas were, in his view, “utterly crude and unintelligent,” but their character moved him: “The brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies,” he wrote in his so-called “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844” (written in 1844; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [1959]). (These manuscripts were not published for some 100 years, but they are influential because they show the humanist background to Marx’s later historical and economic theories.)

The “German-French Yearbooks” proved short-lived, but through their publication Marx befriended Friedrich Engels , a contributor who was to become his lifelong collaborator, and in their pages appeared Marx’s article “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie” (“ Toward the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”) with its oft-quoted assertion that religion is the “opium of the people.” It was there, too, that he first raised the call for an “uprising of the proletariat” to realize the conceptions of philosophy. Once more, however, the Prussian government intervened against Marx. He was expelled from France and left for Brussels—followed by Engels—in February 1845. That year in Belgium he renounced his Prussian nationality.

A Brief Biography of Karl Marx

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Karl Marx (May 5, 1818–March 14, 1883), a Prussian political economist, journalist, and activist, and author of the seminal works, "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital," influenced generations of political leaders and socioeconomic thinkers. Also known as the Father of Communism, Marx's ideas gave rise to furious, bloody revolutions, ushered in the toppling of centuries-old governments, and serve as the foundation for political systems that still rule over more than  20 percent of the world's population —or one in five people on the planet. "The Columbia History of the World" called Marx's writings "one of the most remarkable and original syntheses in the history of human intellect." 

Personal Life and Education

Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (present-day Germany) on May 5, 1818, to Heinrich Marx and Henrietta Pressberg. Marx's parents were Jewish, and he came from a long line of rabbis on both sides of his family. However, his father converted to Lutheranism to evade antisemitism prior to Marx's birth.

Marx was educated at home by his father until high school, and in 1835 at the age of 17, enrolled at Bonn University in Germany, where he studied law at his father's request. Marx, however, was much more interested in philosophy and literature.

Following that first year at the university, Marx became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated baroness. They would later marry in 1843. In 1836, Marx enrolled at the University of Berlin, where he soon felt at home when he joined a circle of brilliant and extreme thinkers who were challenging existing institutions and ideas, including religion, philosophy, ethics, and politics. Marx graduated with his doctoral degree in 1841.

Career and Exile

After school, Marx turned to writing and journalism to support himself. In 1842 he became the editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper "Rheinische Zeitung," but the Berlin government banned it from publication the following year. Marx left Germany—never to return—and spent two years in Paris, where he first met his collaborator, Friedrich Engels.

However, chased out of France by those in power who opposed his ideas, Marx moved to Brussels, in 1845, where he founded the German Workers’ Party and was active in the Communist League. There, Marx networked with other leftist intellectuals and activists and—together with Engels—wrote his most famous work, " The Communist Manifesto ." Published in 1848, it contained the famous line: "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains." After being exiled from Belgium, Marx finally settled in London where he lived as a stateless exile for the rest of his life.

Marx worked in journalism and wrote for both German and English language publications. From 1852 to 1862, he was a correspondent for the "New York Daily Tribune," writing a total of 355 articles. He also continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, as well as actively campaigning for socialism.

He spent the rest of his life working on a three-volume tome, "Das Kapital," which saw its first volume published in 1867. In this work, Marx aimed to explain the economic impact of capitalist society, where a small group, which he called the bourgeoisie, owned the means of production and used their power to exploit the proletariat, the working class that actually produced the goods that enriched the capitalist tsars. Engels edited and published the second and third volumes of "Das Kapital" shortly after Marx's death.

Death and Legacy

While Marx remained a relatively unknown figure in his own lifetime, his ideas and the ideology of Marxism began to exert a major influence on socialist movements shortly after his death. He succumbed to cancer on March 14, 1883, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

Marx's theories about society, economics, and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, argue that all society progresses through the dialectic of class struggle. He was critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, which he called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, believing it to be run by the wealthy middle and upper classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism.

Under socialism, he argued that society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called  communism .

Continuing Influence

Whether Marx intended for the proletariat to rise up and foment revolution or whether he felt that the ideals of communism, ruled by an egalitarian proletariat, would simply outlast capitalism, is debated to this day. But, several successful revolutions did occur, propelled by groups that adopted communism—including those in  Russia, 1917-1919 , and China, 1945-1948. Flags and banners depicting Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, together with Marx, were long displayed in the  Soviet Union . The same was true in China, where similar flags showing the leader of that country's revolution,  Mao Zedong , together with Marx were also prominently displayed.

Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the "thinker of the millennium" by people from around the world. The memorial at his grave is always covered by tokens of appreciation from his fans. His tombstone is inscribed with words that echo those from "The Communist Manifesto," which seemingly predicted the influence Marx would have on world politics and economics: "Workers of all lands unite.”

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HeinOnline Blog

A brief biography of revolutionary socialist karl marx.

• By Lauren Zazzara
• June 26, 2024

German philosopher and socialist Karl Marx had a profound impact on history, sociology, politics, and economics. He may not have seen much of this influence within his lifetime—he died poor, stateless, widowed, and in ill health in 1883—but his ideas and his writings, particularly The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital , would serve as inspiration for various revolutions throughout the 20th century.

With the help of HeinOnline, let’s take a look at Karl Marx’s life, philosophy, and legacy.

A Mischievous Youth

Karl’s high school was run by a liberal principal who was friends with Heinrich and drew suspicion from local police forces, who raided the school in 1832. Karl then began studying humanities at the University of Bonn, where he was generally a troublemaker—he was arrested for drunkenness and participated in a duel, among other schemes. His father encouraged him to transfer to the more academic University of Berlin, where Karl would study law and philosophy.

Radical Roots & Introduction to Hegelianism

Marx & Engels

Marx became co-editor for Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals) and moved to Paris with his new wife, Jenny von Westphalen, to whom he had been engaged for several years. It was while working on this short-lived paper that he met German socialist Friedrich Engels at a cafe on August 28, 1844. Their friendship would prove to shape Marx’s career. Engels had spent time in England observing the working class struggle there and in his publication The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 posited that it would be the working class that would lead an emancipatory revolution.

The Communist Manifesto

Struggles and Successes

Das kapital.

Marx’s philosophy is best demonstrated in his life’s work, Das Kapital . The text consists of three volumes, only the first of which was published in Marx’s lifetime, in 1867—Engels published the second two volumes after Marx’s death. In the text, Marx describes his theory that capital is created through the exploitation of the laboring classes, whose unpaid work creates surplus value that benefits the owning classes. According to Marx, the very nature of capitalism will lead to its collapse—eventually, the working class will engage in a revolution and establish a communist government, through which the proletariat will take ownership of industry and production.

Death and Influence

Marx suffered from poor health throughout his life, including depression and liver issues which were exacerbated by heavy drinking, excessive work, and chronic insomnia. Towards the end of his life, he also experienced painful welts on his skin. He passed away from bronchitis and pleurisy on March 15, 1883, two years after his wife died. He was buried at Highgate Cemetery, and his tomb was later inscribed with the last line from The Communist Manifesto , “Workers of all Lands United,” as well as the phrase “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it,” from his Thesis on Feurerbach .

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Did you know that HeinOnline has books and texts from some of the minds that have shaped history? Our Legal Classics and World Constitutions Illustrated databases contain thousands of titles such as Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production , and also:

• Leviathan, Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth by Thomas Hobbes
• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
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Jul 22, 2014

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Karl Marx. Created by Alexandria Powell. Karl Marx Biography.

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Presentation Transcript

Karl Marx Created by Alexandria Powell

Karl Marx Biography Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a comfortable middle class home in Trier on the river Moselle in Germany on May 5, 1818. At the age of seventeen, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn. At Bonn he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen. The following year Marx’s father sent him to the more serious University of Berlin where he remained four years. Marx became a member of the Young Hegelian movement. In October 1842, he became the editor of the newspaper Colegne. Marx had six children and later lost three of them due to the poor conditions he lived in. He was influenced by Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Feuerbach, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Charles Fourier . Throughout his life he was formally known as a historical materialist, historian, revolutionary , philosopher, and a social scientist.On March 14, 1883 Karl Marx died and was buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London. All of Marx’s thinking's are known as Marxism. He was a major figure in the history of economic and philosophical thought, and a great social prophet.

Karl Marx Ideas • Alienation • Communism • Exploitation • Economics • History • Historical Materialism • Ideology • Morality

Alienation • Alienation is when the worker that becomes alien to his work but at the same time also a alien to himself. Extreme separation from one's own nature, from the products of one's labor, or from social reality, which often results in an indifference or outright aversion toward some aspect of life that might otherwise be attractive and significant. Karl Marx believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Workers in a capitalistic economic system become trapped in a vicious circle: the harder they work, the more resources in the natural world are appropriated for production, which leaves fewer resources for the workers to live on, so that they have to pay for their own livelihood out of their wages, to earn which they must work even harder. Workers are alienated in several distinct ways: from their products as externalized objects existing independently of their makers; form the natural world out of which the raw material of these products has been appropriated; from their own labor, which becomes a grudging necessity instead of a worthwhile activity; and from each other as the consumers of the composite products. These dire conditions, according to Marx, are the invariable consequences of industrial society.

Alienation cont. • Mark depicts the worker under capitalism as suffering from four types of alienated labor. First, from the product which as soon as it is created is taken away from its producer. Second, in productive activity (work) which is experienced as a torment. Third, from species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers. Finally from other human beings, where the relation of exchange replaces mutual need. Mark states, "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

Communism • Communism is the inevitable end to the process of evolution begun with feudalism and passing through capitalism and socialism. Communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. It is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom. Religion in particular is nothing more than human creation with its own social origins and consequences: it gives expression to human suffering without offering any relief from it by disguising its genuine sources in social and economic injustice. Even philosophy, as an abstract discipline, is pointless unless it is transformed or actualized by direct application to practice. Marx maintained that progress would best be founded on a proper understanding of industry and the origins of wealth, together with a realistic view of social conflict. Struggles between distinct economic classes, with the perpetual possibility of revolution, is the inevitable fate of European society. Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. The "first phase" would eventually give way to a "higher phase" in which class differences were eliminated, and a state was no longer needed.

Exploitation • Exploitation is when people still live under in human conditions while they continue to produce commodities that make capitalist richer and richer. Marx’s argued that the greater the “freedom” of the market, the greater the power of capital, and the greater the scale of exploitation. Normal exploitation is based in three structural characteristics of capitalist society: • The ownership of the means of production by a small minority in society, the capitalists; • The inability of non-property-owners (the workers, proletarians) to survive without selling their labor-power to the capitalists • The state, which uses its strength to protect the unequal distribution of power and property in society.

The German Ideology • The German Ideology was written Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1845. The German Ideology presents a notion of history, that it is solely a matter of studying the results of material need in a sort of material dialectic, probably has much merit, it is clear (at least with hindsight) that the version of Communism presented is just silly. Yet, for good and for ill, there has probably never been a text which has had so mighty an influence on the progress of humanity. Quote: “In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

Economics • Capitalism is based on his version of the labor theory of value, and includes that analysis of capital profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. It involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. A commodity is defined as a useful external object, produced for exchange on a market. The conditions for commodity production are the existence of a market, in which exchange can take place, and a social division of labor, in which different people produce different products, without which there would be no motivation for exchange. The labor theory of value states that “the value of an exchangeable good or service lies in the amount of labor required to produce it; the source of profits under capitalism, then, is value added by workers not paid out in wages.” Marx claimed that just as value presented itself in two forms—use value and exchange value—labor had to forms as well. First is concrete labor; this labor creates goods for a particular purpose which translates into use values. Second is abstract labor; the main feature of the object created in this type of labor is its price, is exchange value. Marx labor theory of value asserts that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labor time required to produce it. The division of labor, or the distribution of work and ownership is called society’s production relations.

Das Kapital (Capital) • The Das Kapitalwas Marx first novel in 1867. It is a three volumes. It explored the exploration the relationship between labor, profit, and the distribution of wealth. He claimed that humor labor is the source of all added value. He addresses a myriad of topics, but is most generally trying to present a systematic account of the nature, development, and future of the capitalist system. There is a strong economic focus to this work, and Marx addresses the nature of commodities, wages and the worker-capitalist relationship, among other things. Much of this work tries to show the ways in which workers are exploited by the capitalist mode of production. He also provides a history of past exploitations. Marx argues that the capitalist system is ultimately unstable, because it cannot endlessly sustain profits. Thus, it provides a more technical background to some of his more generally accessible works.

Das Kapital (Capital) cont. • Marx argues that commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value, and that their exchange-value is rooted in how much labor-power went into them. While traditionally people bought commodities in order to use them, capitalists use commodities differently. Their final goal is increased profit. Therefore, they put out money and buy commodities, in order to sell those commodities for a profit. The cycle then repeats itself. The reason why the capitalists are able to make a profit is that they only need to pay workers their value (how much it takes to keep them functional), but the workers produce more than that amount in a day. Thus, the workers are exploited. The capitalists are able to do this because they have more power, and control the means of production. Furthermore, the workers' character is negatively affected by the system. They don't own the products of their labor, and the repetitive work they have to do makes them little more than machines.

History • History was a series of class struggles between owners of capital (capitalists) and (the proletariat) workers. As wealth became more concentrated in the hangs of a few capitalists, he thought, the ranks of an increasingly dissatisfied proletariat would swell, leading to bloody revolution and eventually a classless society. Marx stated that world history is the creation of human labor. He believed that in all phases of history there has always been a conflict two dominant classes of society. Slave society: it has conflict between free citizen.Feudal society: it has conflicts between feudal lord and (aristocrat and citizen). Capitalists society: it has conflicts between capitalists and the workers. Mark stated, “History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.”

History cont. • According to Karl Marx, history develops in accordance with the following observations: • Social progress is driven by progress in the material, productive forces a society has at its disposal (technology, labor, capital goods, etc.) • Humans are inevitably involved in production relations (roughly speaking, economic relationships or institutions ), which constitute our most decisive social relations. • Production relations progress, with a degree of inevitability, following and corresponding to the development of the productive forces. • Relations of production help determine the degree and types of the development of the forces of production. For example, capitalism tends to increase the rate at which the forces develop and stresses the accumulation of capital. • Both productive forces and production relations progress independently of mankind's strategic intentions or will. • The superstructure -- the cultural and institutional features of a society, its ideological materials -- is ultimately an expression of the mode of production (which combines both the forces and relations of production ) on which the society is founded. • Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred production relations (and its exploration) onto society. • State power is usually only transferred from one class to another by social and political upheaval. • When a given style of production relations no longer supports further progress in the productive forces, either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution' must occur. • The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.

Communist Manifesto • Communist Manifesto was created in 1848. The Communist Manifesto reflects an attempt to explain the goals of Communism, as well as the theory underlying this movement. It argues that class struggles, or the exploitation of one class by another, are the motivating force behind all historical developments. Class relationships are defined by an era's means of production. However, eventually these relationships cease to be compatible with the developing forces of production. At this point, a revolution occurs and a new class emerges as the ruling one. This process represents the "march of history" as driven by larger economic forces. Modern Industrial society in specific is characterized by class conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. However, the productive forces of capitalism are quickly ceasing to be compatible with this exploitative relationship. Thus, the proletariat will lead a revolution. However, this revolution will be of a different character than all previous ones: previous revolutions simply reallocated property in favor of the new ruling class. However, by the nature of their class, the members of the proletariat have no way of appropriating property. Therefore, when they obtain control they will have to destroy all ownership of private property, and classes themselves will disappear.

Communist Manifesto • The Manifesto argues that this development is inevitable, and that capitalism is inherently unstable. The Communists intend to promote this revolution, and will promote the parties and associations that are moving history towards its natural conclusion. They argue that the elimination of social classes cannot come about through reforms or changes in government. Rather, a revolution will be required. The Communist Manifesto has four sections. In the first section, it discusses the Communists' theory of history and the relationship between proletarians and bourgeoisie. The second section explains the relationship between the Communists and the proletarians. The third section addresses the flaws in other, previous socialist literature. The final section discusses the relationship between the Communists and other parties. Wealth became concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, the proletariats would become more and more dissatisfied. The Communist Manifesto is the most read out of Marx’s work.

Historical Material ism • Historical materialism is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to live, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society. Historical materialism starts from the view that in order to exist human beings collectively work on nature to produce the means to life. Not all human beings, however, do the same work; there is a division of labor in which people not only do different jobs, but some people live from the work of others by owning the means of production. How this is done depends on the type of society. • Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles: • 1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence. • 2. There is a division of labor into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labor of others. • 3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production. • 4. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class.

Historical Materialism cont. • Historical materialism uses ‘materialism’ to make three separate points, where the truth or falsehood of one point does not affect the others. First there is metaphysical or philosophical materialism, in which matter-in-motion is primary and thought about matter-in-motion, or thought about abstractions, is secondary. Second, there is belief that economic processes form the material base of society upon which institutions and ideas derive and rest. While the economy is the base structure of society, it does not follow that everything in history is determined by the economy, just as every feature of a house is not determined by its foundations. Third, there is the idea that in the capitalist mode of production the behavior of actors in the market economy (means of production, distribution and exchange, the relations of production) plays the major role in configuring society.

Idealolgy • Karl Marx propose that a society’s dominant ideology was a part of its economic base/ superstructure. The base refers to the material, economic, and social relations. In the bases of society there are three levels. The first level is the society’s conditions of production which means the natural conditions or resources that are available to society The next level is the society’s means of production which means the various kinds of equipment, tools, and machinery to be found there. The last level is the mode of production which means political and ideological conditions to be found there. The superstructure is formed on top of the base, and comprises that society’s ideology, as well as its legal system, political system, and religion. For Marx, the base determines the superstructure. Because the ruling class controls the society’s means of production, the superstructure of society, including its ideology, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class’s best interests. The ideologies of the dominant class of a society are proposed to al members of that society in order to make the ruling class’ interests appear to be the interests of all. Marx thought Ideology as an instrument of social reproduction has been an important touchstone for the sociology of knowledge. He believed that society’s superstructure is a reflection of the bases s of that society. Ideology itself represents the "production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness," all that "men say, imagine, conceive," and include such things as "politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc.”

Morality • Marx believed that human morality was determined by the social structure of the State. Since the social structure was based upon the control of material goods, economics determine morality. In other words, morality is determined by the means of production and distribution. Marx's views on morality generate if not a paradox, then certainly a puzzle. On the one hand there seems little doubt that he writes about capitalism from the standpoint of high moral outrage. On the other, on certain readings of Marx morality is merely a form of ideology, with no independent critical force. This has led to a variety of views on the place of the notions of morality and, more particularly, justice in Marx's thought. Reading on this topic should begin with the seminal paper of Allen Wood, ‘The Marxian Critique of Justice'. Related questions concern the nature of communism, for which Marx's most developed writing occurs in his Critique of the Gotha Programme.

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Karl Marx and Marxism - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Karl Marx and Marxism

Karl marx and marxism the development of scientific socialism karl marx and marxism student of hegel and part of the anti-religious group the young hegelians ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• The Development of Scientific Socialism
• student of Hegel and part of the anti-religious group The Young Hegelians
• received a PhD in Philosophy in 1841
• participated as a writer (Neue Rheinische Zeitung) during the Revolutions of 1848
• moved to London after the Revolutions and observed industrial Britain. This experience contributed to his key works -- DasKapital, Communist Manifesto, etc.
• established the International Workingmens Association in 1864 (First International)
• Crime, violence and social injustice are everywhere.
• Poverty, child labour, homelessness, malnutrition and disease are major social problems in most countries.
• Unsafe working conditions, low pay, worker exploitation.
• Humanity is distinguished from the animals by the ability to build and the intrinsic satisfaction gained from building
• Material reward is not the goal of labour. People seek subsistence and work in order to play
• Ideally, we tend to specialize in the things we feel best about doing, and those the community appreciates most
• There are no Natural Rights or Inherited Rights
• Marx borrowed the theory from Hegel
• Materialism Theory seeks to understand the world as it is, not as we perceive or think of it (idealism is based upon pure intellectual constructs ideology, god, religion, etc.) He was not a Utopian Socialist
• It is not consciousness that determines existence, but existence which determines consciousness
• Materialism has an economic base and a social superstructure (Feuerbach)
• Dialect is the process of change and development, with matter in motion -- interaction (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis), conflict, and revolution
• Marx believed that the past held the key to the future.
• Past economic and social developments conditionedfuture developments
• All history heretofore is the history of class struggle
• Stages of development -- Tribalism, Slavery (Plato), Feudalism (Hobbes), Capitalism (Smith), Communism (Marxs theoretical next stage)
• The capitalist world is divided between Bourgeoisie (owners of production) and Proletariat (workers)
• People are deceived by the socio-economic system into believing that satisfaction comes from the accumulation and consumption of material goods
• Materialism leads to alienation, the expropriation of resources, and the creation of classes
• Class distinctions invariably lead to exploitation (Kings exploit subjects, owners exploit workers) Surplus labour is kept by slave owners, kings and capitalists
• While Rousseau claimed revolution was a duty in such circumstances, Marx claimed it was an inevitability Marx was an Empiricist, Pragmatist, and Realist
• Marx rejects any idea that does not fit with the reality of human existence
• Marx also rejects the idea of absolutes in morality and law Property rights and ownership are the basis of capitalist exploitation (You have no inalienable rights, not even the right to life so the Proletariat may eliminate the Bourgeoisie)
• Revolution to overthrow the exploiters of the Proletariat. As he starts his Communist Manifesto, workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
• Public ownership of all material items eliminate private ownership which leads to alienation, inequality, etc.
• Dictatorship of the Proletariat The workers run everything There is no one left to exploit
• We all have one thing in common Labour. From each according to his (her) ability, to each according to his need.
• Universal World Government
• Think of the crazy people who fought to eliminate inequality in any of its forms Christ, Confucius, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. What do they have in common?
• What makes Marx so different and so hated?
• Is it his focus on property, not spiritual or legal rights. What does that tells us about.us?

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