Karl Marx

1818-1883

Background
Was born third of seven children to a Jewish family in Trier,Prussia in the western province of the Rhineland Father converted to Christianity as a Lutheran in 1818 because of the potential loss of his law practice Father introduced the value of knowledge exposing Marx to Enlightenment thinkers as well as German, and Greek classics Educated at home until the age of thirteen Graduated from the Trier Gymnasium and and enrolled at the University of Bonn to study law at his fathers advice He was interested in studying philosophy and literature but his father wouldnt allow it because he didnt believe he would be able to support himself A year later father forced him to transfer to Humboldt University of Berlin where he ended up studying philosophy and earning his doctorate in 1841 While at University of Berlin he met and joined the group called the Young Hegelians

 Marx did not stay with Hegelians long due to an opposition to the spiritual idealism of their philosophy In 1841 Marx met Moses Hess who introduced him to Communism and wrote for Hess paper Rheinische Zeitung where he wrote about social conditions. Hess also linked him together with Friedrich Engels In 1844 in France Marx and Engels met face to face for the first time. Engels would guide Marxs interest in economics Marx and Engels formed the Communist Correspondence Committee. The two then in 1847 attended the Second Congress of the communist league where they presented a detailed plan on how Communism should be organized this became the Communist Manifesto and was published in 1848 The same year the Manifesto was published Marx was suspected in taking part in a revolt In Brussels and was expelled from the country with his wife and children He would move to France and be expelled from there, triggering his move to London where he would live for the rest of his life

Family Life
Marx married Jenny von westphalen, the educated daughter of a Prussian Baron in 1843. The couple were engaged when he was seventeen but his family didnt want him to get married so young so they waited several years Von Westphalens family didnt like Marx's Jewish heritage or his social standing and even threatened to cut her off financially Only her father, who was the follower of French socialist Saint-Simon, was fond of Marx Marx had seven children but only three survived to adulthood Marx's daughter became a socialist as well and helped edit his works His wife died in 1881 and he died of bronchitis in 1883. The messages carved on his tombstone are workers of all lands unite and the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways- the point however is to change it

Intellectual influences
The Enlightenment and Romanticsim Formative years consumed with the liberal spirit of enlightenment Many divergent doctrines of Enlightenment through: French philosophers were rationalists, the British sensationalists, and others like La Mettrie were materialists All shared common belief in the possibility of altering human environment in such a way to allow more wholesome development of human capacities Marx sought revolutionary change as pre-condition for realization of liberal idealism of : Secularism, Universalism, and rationalism Marx's ideas of self-realization, human potential, guideline for society, and search of laws of evolutionary form were all influenced by Enlightenment and Romanticsim

 German Idealism
Marx came to believe conflict is inevitable due to Kant's pessimistic view of human progress Kant's Second Discourse was an early source for Marx's notion of alienation Marx's philosophical studies took place in an intellectual climate dominated by thought of Hegel and his followers Marx general aim was to evaluate Hegel's political philosophy In Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of right (1843) Marx describes his philosophical differences with Hegelian thought:
Hegel started with abstract ideas instead of concrete reality His defense of the Monarchy Disagreement on the role of bureaucracy Disagreement on the sovereignty of the state

 Marx learned of the holistic approach through Hegel's ides of totality Marx's version of Communism was free to mankind from the division of labor

Ludwig Feuerbach
Important link between Hegel and Marx Marx read and was influenced by Essence of Christianity Believed that Feuerbach successfully criticized Hegel's concept of the spirit of man Was also struck by humanistic aspects of Feuerbachs work Didnt agree on everything. Eleven points summarize Marx's disagreements with Feuerbach;
Doesn't conceive human activity as objective reality The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical one The coincidence of changing circumstances can be conceived only as a revolutionary practice Feuerbach starts from fact of religious self alienation and believes the world should be secular

 Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence Feuerbach doesn't see that the religious sentiment is itself a social product All social life is essentially practical The highest point reached by contemplative materialism is the contemplation of single persons in civil society The stand point of the old materials is civil society, the standpoint of the new human society Marx states the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however is to change it.

 Friedrich Engels
Most important influential person in Marx's life Marx and Engels demanded a better order of society Their famous, Manifesto of the Communist Party, discusses the main principles of the socialism they worked out The two friends were the heart and soul of the revolutionary-democratic aspiration throughout Europe Through Engels, Marx was introduced to the concrete conditions and misery of the working class They were the first to show that the working class and their struggles were a result of the ruling classs attempts to oppress the proletariat Marx and Engels attempted to organize the working class into revolution, so that they could attain economic and political freedom

Marxist Concepts
Human Potential
Marx believed that societies prior to capitalism were too oppressive of humans to realize their full potential He thought that capitalism was still too oppressive for most people to realize their full potential, but saw capitalism as a necessary evil for the sake of Communism Marx thought Communism would provide the type of environment for people to start realizing and expressing their full potential Marx used the concept of species being when talking about human potential to separate man from animals

German Ideology
This was a written piece that Engels and Marx said was to settle accounts with former philosophical ideas. In this account, they critique Feuerbach, Max Stirner, the Holy Family, and the Young Hegelians Said that the Young Hegelians were fighting phrases with phrases dubbing them heroes of the mind Marx said Hegelian thought did not address the relationship between consciousness or thought and the reality which the thought or consciousness is about This is said to be one of their major achievements in which they set out to cut through the metaphysical of the young Hegelians and sets out the Materialistic conception of history

Historical Materialism
The concept of Historical Materialism was established in The German Ideology Marx wanted to reconcile materialism and idealism by combining critical and scientific aspects of materialism with the dynamic and historical components of idealism He rejected the ideas of simple non-belief and Hegel's view of reality accepting a materialist view and combining in it with Hegel's dynamic and dialectical process this is what is referred to as historical materialism

Class Consciousness and false consciousness

Marx said that people are different from animals because we have consciousness as well as the ability to link consciousness to their activities Class consciousness is the sense of common identification among members of a given class False consciousness refers to the inability to clearly see where ones own best interest lie Class consciousness is illustrated by ones relative position to the means of production and access to scarce resources Marx was speaking of consciousness in the terms as society as a whole and not on an individual level

Religion
Marx saw religion as an example of false consciousness. He also thought it was another abstract creation that had become reified throughout time Thought was one of the biggest factors preventing full human potential Said that the power elites encouraged the weak masses to keep them in power and he even referred to religion as the opiate of the masses Marx was against religion for three reasons:
Thought it was a distraction keep man from his essence He felt that while man was in this distracted state, he allowed himself to be exploited and controlled

Class Theory
The critical issue in an industrial society is production and the distribution of land. Those who controlled the land would control through means of production Classes were formed to control the means of property possession. This would in turn result in class conflicts

Grundrisse
Grundrisse is a manuscript of seven notebooks compiled from 1857-1858 It was published in 1941 and was the culmination of his economic studies A lot of Marxs themes appear in Grundrisses book

Alienation
Alienation, according to Marx, is a condition in which humans become dominated by the forces of their own creation The first stage of alienation is alienation from the product that the workers produce. The laborers also do not know the aspects of the production process they are working in Second, workers are alienated from the process of production. They are not involved in productive activity meaning that they are not working to satisfy their own needs. They become alienated because it is not satisfying and becomes monotonous eventually becoming alienated from ones self Last, the worker becomes alienated from his fellow workers

Means of Production & Capitalism

Karl Marx
Marx defines the Means of production as the combination of the means of labor which include equipment, tools, ect and the subject of labor or the actual material worked with for an item He defines capitalism as a mode of production or the

means under which capitalists own the means of production and the workers sell them their labor power to produce an item

G.W.F Hegel Two concepts represents the essence of Hegel's philosophy which are Dialectic and Idealism Dialectic is considered to be an image of the world that stresses the importance of processes, relations, conflicts and contradictions Idealism emphasizes the importance of the mind and mental processes Hegel would have considered capitalism an mental bi product

Commodities and the production of surplus value

A commodity is an object that is capable of satisfying some want or need Object are products that cannot achieve independent existence Use value are objects that produced for use by ones self Exchange value happens when the product produced is for trade and not personal use

Fetishism of commodities
Fetishism of commodities occurs when actors dont recognize that their labor gives commodities their value The value is believed to come from natural properties Exchange value of a commodity is expressed by its use value

Capital
Capital involves the social relationship between buyers and sellers Marx felt that since the workers labor gave the product value they also had the capacity to change the system He also believed that a superstructure existed composed of raw materials, labor, technology and those who control the means of production

Private Property
Private property is made from the labor of workers and reified by capitalism Private property is defined as the private ownership of the means of production Marx felt that if human potential was to be realized that the notion of private property must be suppressed Felt that the means of production should be shared equally through public ownership

Division of labor
In the German ideology the roots of labor division were traced and Marx equates the family as the earliest model describing the wife and children as slaves The capitalist system surplus was created and controlled production and the surplus as well, making it possible for divisions and classes to create The surplus of materials comes with the unequal sharing of the surplus creating a struggle between peoples. Marx believed that Communism would eliminate the division of labor

Communism
Communism is a form of government which attempts to empower workers and eliminate social class. Its socioeconomic structure promotes the establishment of a classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the Means of production. It is usually considered a branch of the broader socialist movement that draws on the various political and intellectual movements that trace their origins back to the work of theorists of the industrial revolution and the French Revolution. Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems believed to be inherent with representative democracy, capitalist economies and the legacy of imperialism and colonialism. The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, Trotskyism and Luxemburg's, are based on Marxism. Karl Marx is sometimes known as the "father of Communism", but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and anarchist communism) also exist.

Relevancy
Marxist thought is very controversial Despite lack of complete understanding of the role of capitalism in the future, many contumacy authors use Marxist economic analysis in their own attempts to understand modern Capitalism Marx's analysis of the differences between use value and exchange value are relevant in the criticism of globalization Reaching ones full human potential has never been a more important goal especially in American society Marx has been proven correct that religion continues to serve as a higher barrier against peace and accord Many people still suffer from forms of alienation and have gone after leisure pursuits as a means to attain a level of identification and form a sense of community Marx would be happy with the Internet, it is the consumer- the proletariat that is using the net to gain control

 Realism vs. Idealism

Realist- We can explain conflict by studying power

Realism vs. nominalism

Realist- Although we cant see power or conflict, it still exists

Idealist or materialist
Materialist-stressed the importance of economy on society

Additional resources
"Communism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 6 Mar 2008, 05:54
UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 Mar 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&oldid=196

228056>. The Communist Manifesto." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Mar 2008, 20:05 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 Mar 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Communist_Manife sto&oldid=196109063

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