...Karl Marx was a very intriguing philosopher and had a lot of strong opinions that he was not shy about voicing. His ideas on change and how he thougth the world could seriously change were very strong. Marx was a philospher that had many beliefs and stood strongly by each one. From him believing that reality and histroy should be dialectally veiwed, to his beliefs that only a large scale in an econimic system can bring about real change. His beliefs of communism and all other things became its own and is referred to as Marxism. Marxism is defined as the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed as the basis for communism according to Merriam online dictionary. Marx was influenced by many, its said that his ideas of how the structure of this society should be ran stemmed from the orginal philosophies of Georg Hegel. Hegel was once his professor, and I beleive Marx's strong politcal beliefs all started after hearing the views Hegel held close to him. Marx was bold, argumentative and very critical. Critical is a bit harsh but he got most of his points across through critique. According to an untitled article Marx was the first great user of critical method in social sciences and with this tool he'd pursue the job of sharing his strong deep rooted beliefs voiced in a philosophical way to ensure that the public thinks about what exactly is being said. Marx has many things published, such as the Communist Manifesto. He did a lot...
Words: 1321 - Pages: 6
...was created to keep the proletariat docile and accepting to the way things were. Marx’s also contended that region was an enemy to his socialist revolutionary state. This was base on that religion was sedating and misdirecting so being it was taking away from the proletariat rising and moving forward toward the perfect classless society. Now although Marx believed religion, was created by the bourgeoisie I tend not to agree with this theory. Religion was created long before the bourgeoisie. As we know religion has roots to the beginning of time. It is not to use to keep people in line as explained by Marx. People have used religion for various reasons whether it is for an explanations for why things happen, for a spiritual well being or for attaining eternal life. I do not believe it can be used a trickery so to speak to keep people in line. Of coarse I am sure it can be if one tries to manipulate it. I guess you may see this within some cults. But Marx was talking about society as a whole not just about some cult. Onto Marx contention, that it is an enemy to his socialist revolutionary state. I like the end result for Marx theory on his socialist state. Although I know it will never be achieved it is a good theory. But as to whether it was sedating I can’t see that. Religion may be uplifting but in my opinion it is not sedating. As far as misdirecting, I...
Words: 512 - Pages: 3
...Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Karl Marx Estranged Labour ||XXII| We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labor, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land – likewise division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange value, etc. On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes – property owners and propertyless workers. Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these laws – i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy throws no light on the cause...
Words: 5275 - Pages: 22
...KARL MARX Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, sociologist, historian, political economist, political theorist and revolutionary socialist, who developed the socio-political theory of Marxism. His ideas play a significant role in both the development of social science and also in the socialist political movement. Marx's theories about society, economics and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, hold that all society progresses through class struggle. He was heavily critical of the current 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, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. Marx polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique, and thus he has been called "the first great user of critical method in social sciences. Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human history involves transforming human nature, which encompasses both human beings and material objects. Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves. Marx had a special concern with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labour power.[120] He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. Refers to the separation...
Words: 1217 - Pages: 5
...Karl Marx: Sociologist of the 19th Century Karl Marx: Sociologist of the 19th Century Karl Marx was a man who was way ahead of his time. He was born in modern day Germany in 1818. He came from a long line of rabbis but decided not to follow that lifestyle. At the age of 17 he decided to attend Bonn University. He was taking law classes at Bonn University, but a year later he enrolled at the University of Berlin. While attending Berlin Karl Marx joined a group called Young Hegelians. This was a radical group full of students who criticized religion and politics. This was really the first noted time that Marx questioned authority, but would not be the last. Karl Marx graduated from school with his doctorates in 1941 at the age of 23 years old (Wolff 2003) In 1842 Marx got his first real job as an editor for the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (Parsons 1964.) A year after acquiring this job the government ordered suppression of the newspaper, which caused Marx to quit. Shortly after resigning as editor Marx got married to his long time fiancé. They two of them moved to Paris in 1843. While in Paris, Marx worked for a paper while also working on a political journal. The writings Marx had in this newspaper got him expelled from France. (Wolff 2003) The first political journal that Marx worked on was titled Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. There was only one issue of this published before Marx and his co-writer got into a disagreement and decided to not continue...
Words: 1030 - Pages: 5
...February 27, 2012 SOC 200 Karl Marx Growing up in communist Romania in the 70’s and 80’s, deprived of the most basic liberties, as young children we were indoctrinated with communist ideas and schools were used merely as platforms in which curriculum strictly controlled with the purpose of instilling in youth communist principles. Karl Marx’s portrait would hang in every classroom above the old blackboard and his theories were studied and celebrated in every history book, literature book, economics, or any book for that matter. Sociology and Psychology were considered pseudo-sciences under the communist reign and therefore forbidden in schools. As Romanian history books were altered from the truth, describing only his greatest achievements and never the flaws, for the purpose of this project I was rather intrigued to research Karl Marx – I hated him for so many years - and take a really close look at who he actually was, and how he impacted the study of Sociology. I knew that he established the basis of communist ideology, and I have lived for twenty years through the atrocities committed by his followers, but I never really had the interest ( until now) to understand what influenced and drove him into envisioning and writing his proposals for change. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in the German Rhineland (Prussia). He was a philosopher, journalist and economist and even though he produced little that earned him money or recognition during...
Words: 1176 - Pages: 5
...4 February 2013 Durkheim and Marx Throughout time sociology has been created and built upon. It has been edited and revised over and over again and even though there’s more that needs to be worked on and more bricks to be added, some credit has to be given to two of the many people who laid the first bricks, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. Knowing each one of their point of views is important to understand them and how they are similar and how they differ. Marx focused on class division and how it shapes society. He focused on the business aspects and how children grow up to be like their parents. If a child is born into a family who lives off welfare, then they are most likely going to be on welfare. Marx opinion on the working class was as quoted in the article, written by Shaun Best, “Working-class people are said to hold values, ideas and beliefs about the nature of inequality.” (49). He states that the more money a person has, the more power they have in a society. He found that they separate themselves from other classes. Durkheim didn’t just focus on the business aspects but took it further out on the people. Durkheim was a functionalist. “Durkheim argued that we should treat social facts as things.” (Best) (17). That quote means we need to study sociology as if it were an object we can dissect. The working class makes up 99% of the society and people have the choices to conform or not to conform to the ways of the society. He really studied suicide and the...
Words: 468 - Pages: 2
...proletariat.” (Marx 204) If there is a movie that represents exactly what Karl Marx said about society being split into two very drastic classes, it is The Hunger Games. Besides being one of the most popular trilogies of our time right now, The Hunger Games, represents a strict division of social classes and how after years of repression, the working class finally decides to come together and unite against the owners of the means of production. Karl Marx explains the clear difference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. The bourgeoisie are the ones who own the means of production and the proletariats are the ones who worked and did all the manual labor and whose hard work would only end up benefitting the bourgeoisie. In The Hunger Games, we see Marx’s representation of the bourgeoisie being the rulers of the two social classes, just like the people of the Capitol were, and the people in the districts were the proletariats. In The Hunger Games, the concept of family and unity is present to us because we see it through Katniss, Primrose, and her mother and as well as other families in the districts. There seems to be, however, no unity between all the districts. The only form of communication between them and the Capitol was for the exchange of goods and services. Likewise, the proletariats had no communication or business with the bourgeoisie other than anything having to do with the waged work they performed for them. Another major point that Karl Marx made and...
Words: 519 - Pages: 3
... Post the cold war Communism and Marxism remained mere philosophies which couldn't stand the test of time. They were either “impractical" modes of organizing economy and polity or rather were theories which were more advanced than the ages in which they were tested. It is thus the farsightedness of Marx which makes his theory extremely relevant for people to at least study. Marx principally focused on observation and historical analysis. According to him there were two Classes in the society - The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The former was the class which owned all the resources and organized production, the later is the laboring class who own nothing but their own physical power to run the machines. Thus both the producers and the workers are in a symbiotic relationship. Still we see that the capitalist can survive for a longer time without the worker as compared to the vice versa, putting the workers in a compromising position. Thus in the fight of wage determination, the capitalists tend to win, thereby fixing the wage rate which is sufficient for survival (which according to Marx s living like cattle). According to the Marxist ideology, “when the capitalists and the laborers suffer equally, the worker suffers in his very existence, the capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon. The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of subsistence; he has to struggle to get work, i.e., the...
Words: 907 - Pages: 4
...Marx as a Racist Born on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx was the first son in the family to not die early. While his other older brothers had died of illness, Karl lived on and was thought of by his mother as a Gluckskind, or “child of fortune.” The Marx family was a middl3eclass family in the city of Trier. Karl, much like his father, had mental gifts. When he came of age his family shipped him to the University of Bonn for schooling. His father, a self-made attorney, implored Karl to study hard and attain knowledge for reaching steady employment. Instead of listening to his father, Karl squandered his father’s money and became engulfed in debt. Along with debt, Karl also indulged in drunkenness and even engaged in a duel. Karl chose to use his years at college learning Greek and Roman mythology. To add to his selfishness, after schooling Karl married much to his families’ consternation. Karl also refused to support his mother and sisters after his father had died. Karl grew disgusted at his mother and wanted her to die so he could gain her inheritance. There are many things Karl Marx did growing up that God’s Word speaks against. I believe Karl Marx proved early on just how selfish he was. In Ephesians 6:2 the Lord wishes us to honor our parents. There are also countless warnings about drunkenness and being in debt. But we must heed these warnings and not ignore them. Karl Marx was Jewish and raised a Lutheran so I believe he was taught proper morals. Often the choices...
Words: 1164 - Pages: 5
...Changing History or Preserving the Past? Both Rousseau and Marx have contrasting views on private property. Throughout this essay I will go in-depth at both theorists’ critique of private property individually, and as a whole. Having been written 150 years ago, both Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality and Marx’s Communist Manneifsto ideas of private property still remain relevant till this day. Marx has a very aggressive view of property. Marx believes that private property divides society into two groups the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The bourgeoisie are the people who have all the land. Where the Proletariat are known to have no property (means of production), and who are the people who apply labor to the land. According to Marx the division between these two groups in society has been going on since the beginning of history, and is extremely important to realize that history has dictated how people are grouped into these societies. “In bourgeois society…. the past dominates the present; in...
Words: 614 - Pages: 3
...be about the main elements of Karl Marx’s work, which includes the Paris Manuscripts, which will focus on alienation. The Communist Manifesto, which will focus on Marx’s political and economic theories and Capital Vol. 1., Marx’s final work about how profits are made by the capitalist. Karl Marx was a liberal reformist who believed that capitalism could be reformed and inequality and exploitation of the working classes could be addressed and abolished. (Stones, p.22) . In 1844 Karl Marx wrote and published “The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844”, better known as “The Paris Manuscripts.” This was Karl Marx’s first work, where he writes a study about alienation of workers. (Hughes p.27) What does one mean by alienation? Karl Marx states that the alienated person feels a lack of meaning in his life, or a lack of self-realization. (Hughes p.27) “One must understand, he argues, that there are three types of alienation. The first type of alienation is alienation from oneself. The second type of alienation is alienation from his fellow human beings. The third type of alienation is alienation from the world as a whole. These three forms of alienation are interconnected, and Karl Marx describes the connections between them. This is the core of his approach to the problem of alienation (Monthly Review, 2000, p.36-53). An example of alienation does not have to stem from the workplace, however. For example, I know many persons who attend the same church as I do, but attend it...
Words: 1241 - Pages: 5
...arl Marx was communism’s most zealous intellectual advocate. His comprehensive writings on the subject laid the foundation for later political leaders, notably V. I. Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, to impose communism on more than twenty countries. Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (now Germany), in 1818. He studied philosophy at universities in Bonn and Berlin, earning his doctorate in Jena at the age of twenty-three. His early radicalism, first as a member of the Young Hegelians, then as editor of a newspaper suppressed for its derisive social and political content, preempted any career aspirations in academia and forced him to flee to Paris in 1843. It was then that Marx cemented his lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels. In 1849 Marx moved to London, where he continued to study and write, drawing heavily on works by David Ricardo and Adam Smith. Marx died in London in 1883 in somewhat impoverished surroundings. Most of his adult life, he relied on Engels for financial support. At the request of the Communist League, Marx and Engels coauthored their most famous work, “The Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848. A call to arms for the proletariat—“Workers of the world, unite!”—the manifesto set down the principles on which communism was to evolve. Marx held that history was a series of class struggles between owners of capital (capitalists) and workers (the proletariat). As wealth became more concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists, he thought, the ranks of an increasingly...
Words: 460 - Pages: 2
...Heather Jones Contemporary Political Thought Dr. Pickell November 24, 2015 Karl Heinrich Marx Throughout history many ideologies have been created and many philosophers have explained their thoughts and ideas. It has been over a century since Marx’s death, but he still remains to be one of the most highly influential figures (Prychitko). Karl Marx was not known as a 19th century philosopher, yet he was known as a German journalist, revolutionary socialist, and revolutionary communist. Not only did he discuss political and social issues, but he also inquired about history. Karl Marx was born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx in Trier, on May 5, 1818 and was one of nine siblings. According to Ball, Dagger, and O’Neill, his father Heinrich was a Jewish, wealthy lawyer in Trier, but was forced to convert to Christianity because the government did not allow Jews to practice law. He was privately educated prior to going to college, and because Marx’s family was wealthy, he went to study law at the University of Bonn. There his grades began to deteriorate because he dedicated himself to his friends, alcohol, and trouble instead of his studies. As a consequence, his father made him relocate to University of Berlin, and while studying philosophy and pursuing law here he was introduced to the ideas Hegel and Feuerbach. In 1941, Marx graduated with a doctorate in Philosophy, but later turned to journalism because with his radical way of thinking he was unable to find an academic...
Words: 1844 - Pages: 8
...Karl Marx: A Man of Many Thoughts Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a wealthy in the Prussian Rhineland of Trier, Germany to Herschel Marx and Henrietta Pressburg. The German born philosopher, economist, historian, journalist and revolutionary socialist was born on May 5, 1818, later becoming a pioneer in the world of economics, focusing on the relationship between labor and capital(Wikipedia). Marx became interested in philosophy after studying the Young Hegelians at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin (Wikipedia). Later he began associating with a few communist societies, where he would meet the person he would collaborate with from then on. Through his ever changing ideas and philosophies, Karl Marx has influenced Socialist as well as Communist, on his road to becoming one of history’s greatest minds. When Marx was developing as a young economist and historian much of his influence came from his connection he felt to Hegel and the Young Hegelians. Most of the Young Hegelians were instrumental in assisting Hegel by pushing him to further the most conservative implications of his work. Much of Marx’s significant advancements of this time of his life were the result of him trying to find his place in amongst Hegel and the other talented Young Hegelians like Ludwig Feuerbach, who thought to try and re-write the metaphysics Hegel and recently developed in the early 1840’s, critiquing Hegel’s doctrine of religion and the state, in the process. The works...
Words: 1063 - Pages: 5
