the most inf luential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19 th century

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. Labour 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. - Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)

Karl Marx is a philosopher, political theorist, social scientist, historian, and a revolutionary. Marxism is the system of thought development by Karl Marx, his co-worker Friedrich Engels, and their followers.

His Belief: "The proofs of the existence of God are nothing but proofs for the existence of the essentially human self-consciousness. . . . Man is the supreme being for man. . . . Atheism and communism . . . are but the 1st real coming-to-be, the realization become real for man, of man's essence."

y Karl Marx's (1818- 1883) thought was strongly

influenced by: y The dialectical method and historical orientation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; y The classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo; y French socialist and sociological thought, in particular the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

-son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in Trier, Germany, in 1818
-After schooling in Trier (1830-35), Marx entered Bonn

University to study law.

-he moved to the more sedate Berlin University -Marx came under the inf luence of one of his

lecturers, Bruno Bauer, whose atheism and radical political opinions got him into trouble with the authorities. Bauer introduced Marx to the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, who had been the professor of philosophy at Berlin until his death in 1831.

-Marx was especially impressed by Hegel's theory that a thing or thought could not be separated from its opposite. For example, the slave could not exist without the master, and vice versa. -when his father died, he had to earn his own living and he decided to become a university lecturer -Marx now tried journalism but his radical political views meant that most editors were unwilling to publish his articles. - He moved to Cologne where the city's liberal opposition movement was fairly strong. Known as the Cologne Circle, this group had its own newspaper, The Rhenish Gazette. The newspaper published an article by Marx where he defended the freedom of the press.

-October, 1842, Marx was appointed editor of the newspaper. -While in Cologne he met Moses Hess, a radical who called himself a socialist. Marx began attending socialist meetings organized by Hess. -sufferings being endured by the German workingclass and explained how they believed that only socialism could bring this to an end -Marx decided to write an article on the poverty of the Mosel wine-farmers. -Warned that he might be arrested, Marx quickly married his girlfriend, Jenny von Westphalen, and moved to France where he was offered the post of editor of a new political journal, Franco-German Annals.

-In Paris he began mixing with members of the working class

for the first time. Marx was shocked by their poverty but impressed by their sense of comradeship.
-Marx, who now described himself as a communist, argued

that the working class (the proletariat), would eventually be the emancipators of society.
-In 1844 Marx wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

In this work he developed his ideas on the concept of alienation. - worker is alienated from what he produces - the worker is alienated from himself; only when he is not working does he feel truly himself - in capitalist society people are alienated from each other; that is, in a competitive society people are set against other people.

-Marx believed the solution to this problem was communism as this would enable the fulfilment of "his potentialities as a human. -While working on their first article together, The Holy Family, the Prussian authorities put pressure on the French government to expel Marx from the country. -On 25th January 1845, Marx received an order deporting him from France. Marx and Engels decided to move to Belgium, a country that permitted greater freedom of expression than any other European state.

-When Karl Marx returned to Brussels he concentrated on finishing his book, The German Ideology. In the book Marx developed his materialist conception of history, a theory of history in which human activity, rather than thought, plays the crucial role.
-In January 1846 Marx set up a Communist

Correspondence Committee. The plan was to try and link together socialist leaders living in different parts of Europe.
-Inf luenced by Marx's ideas, socialists in England held a

conference in London where they formed a new organization called the Communist League.

y -In December 1847 attended a meeting of the Communist League'

Central Committee in London. y -aims of the organization: the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the domination of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society based on class antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society without classes and without private property
y -When Marx returned to Brussels he concentrated on writing The

Communist Manifesto. y - it was an accessible account of communist ideology. Written for a mass audience, the book summarized the forthcoming revolution and the nature of the communist society that would be established by the proletariat.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. -With the disappearance of the bourgeoisie as a class, there would no longer be a class society. -The Communist Manifesto was published in February, 1848. The following month, the government expelled Marx from Belgium. -Marx and Engels visited Paris before moving to Cologne where they founded a radical newspaper, the New Rhenish Gazette. -to encourage the revolutionary atmosphere

-After examples of police brutality in Cologne, Marx helped establish a Committee of Public Safety to protect the people against the power of the authorities. -On 9th May, 1849, Marx received news he was to be expelled from the country Cologne -Marx now went to France where he believed a socialist revolution was likely to take place at any time. -15th September he sailed for England -In 1852, Charles Dana, the socialist editor of the New York Daily Tribune, offered Marx the opportunity to write for his newspaper.

-Over

the next ten years the newspaper published 487 articles by Marx (125 of them had actually been written by Engels). radical in the USA, George Ripley, commissioned Marx to write for the New American Cyclopaedia.

-Another

-Marx

published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859 - Marx argued that the superstructure of law, politics, religion, art and philosophy was determined by economic forces Despite all his problems Marx continued to work and in 1867 the first volume of Das Kapital was published.

y A detailed analysis of capitalism, the book dealt with

important concepts such as surplus value (the notion that a worker receives only the exchange-value, not the use-value, of his labour); division of labour (where workers become a "mere appendage of the machine") and the industrial reserve army (the theory that capitalism creates unemployment as a means of keeping the workers in check).

y In the final part of Das Capital Marx deals with the

issue of revolution. Marx argued that the laws of capitalism will bring about its destruction. Capitalist competition will lead to a diminishing number of monopoly capitalists, while at the same time, the misery and oppression of the proletariat would increase. Marx claimed that as a class, the proletariat will gradually become "disciplined, united and organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production" and eventually will overthrow the system that is the cause of their suffering. Marx now began work on the second volume of Das Capital

y Marx was encouraged by the formation of the Paris

Commune in March 1871 and the abdication of Louis Napoleon. Marx called it the "greatest achievement" since the revolutions of 1848, but by May the revolt had collapsed and about 30,000 Communards were slaughtered by government troops.
y He continued to work on the second volume of Das

Capital but progress was slow.

y Marx, who had a swollen liver, survived, but Jenny

Marx died on 2nd December, 1881. Karl Marx was also devastated by the death of his eldest daughter in January 1883 from cancer of the bladder. Karl Marx died two months later on the 14th March, 1883.

y 1841 Received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Jena y y y y y

y y

1842-1843 Served as editor of the radical publication Rheinische Zeitung at Cologne until it was suppressed by the Prussian government. 1843-1845 Lived in Paris after being exiled from Prussia 1845-1848 Lived in Brussels after being expelled from France for revolutionary activities 1848 With German political economist Friedrich Engels, published the Communist Manifesto, the central text of modern communism 1848 Founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, but the magazine was again suppressed by the government the following year 1849 Settled in London after his German citizenship was revoked 1851-1862 Served as a European correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune 1864 In London, helped found the International Workingmen's Association (First International), a revolutionary socialist organization that aspired to represent the working class across national lines 1867 Published the first volume Das Kapital; the second and third volumes were edited and published by Friedrich Engels after Marx's death

Statue of Marx and Engels in the Statue Park, Budapest

Capitalism needs to function like a game of tug-ofwar. Two opposing sides needs to continually struggle for dominance, but at no time can either side be permitted to walk away with the rope. Pete Holiday

y Economic system in which private individuals and

business firms carry on the production and exchange of goods and services through a complex network of prices and markets. y Karl Marx believed that this economic theory had to be replaced by a different economic and social system. y capital- kind of property which exploits wage labor; social power y Marx despised capitalism, believing that it created prosperity for only a few and poverty for many, so he called for an international struggle to bring about its downfall.

y The theory or system of the ownership and operation

of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals. y Under socialism, there still remains a vestige of capitalism wherein an economic activity is still basically organized through the use of incentive systems. y Under socialism, each person contributes to the economic process according to his ability and receives an income according to his contribution.

y It puts control of all property into the hands of the

government directly. y Communism is the abolishment of private ownership. y Communism was originally envisioned by Marx and Engels as the last stages of their socialist revolution. y Communism is a brutal system of government. It does not just fail to protect individual rights, it establishes a system of violence force. The results have been exactly what one would predict: starvation, poverty, and the slaughter of millions. (http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Bloody_Communism.html)

y Scientific socialism is communism y Between the capitalist and communist systems of society

lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. This corresponds to a political transition period, whose state can be nothing else but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. --Critique of the Gotha Program (1875; translated 1922) y Socialism is the economic system while communism is the political system. y Capitalism is synonymous to individualism; communism means the abolition of individualism; and behind communism is socialism

Marx s ideas and theories came to be known as Marxism, or scientific socialism, which constituted one of the principal currents of 20th-century political thought. Marxism is also called as the theory of the proletariat. It is where science becomes revolutionary. Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the socialists and the communists are the theoreticians of the proletariat class.

y The study of Marxism falls under three main headings,

corresponding broadly to philosophy, social history and economics - Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxist Economics. These are the famous "Three component parts of Marxism" of which Lenin wrote.

y Marx believed that he could study history and society

scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist revolution is inevitable. However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world. Consequently, most followers of Marx are not fatalists, but activists who believe that revolutionaries must organize social change.

Dialectics Everything is made out of opposing forces/ opposing sides (contradictions). Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other. Materialism - the only thing that exists is matter. All things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance.

y Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of Marxism,

which provides us with a scientific and comprehensive world outlook. It is the philosophical bedrock - the method - on which the whole of Marxist doctrine is founded. y The basic idea of dialectical materialism is that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, while at the same time developing internal contradictions or weaknesses that contribute to its decay.

y According to Conflict Theory, social organization and

change are based upon conflicts built into society. y Marx s notions of change were built on the writing of a philosopher, Hegel, who developed the concept of the dialectic. y This notion was based on the idea that everything had within itself the seeds of its own destruction, but that a new form would rise from the ashes of the resulting destruction.

y Marx took this idea of the dialectic and applied it to

society, saying that the origins of change are all materialistic, not based on ideas.
y As technology of people developed from

gatherer/hunters, to agriculture (horticulture/herding) to the Industrial revolution, changes in the technology led to changes in social organization and to changes in beliefs and values.

y The major source of conflict in the industrial age was

between: y the workers, whom he called the Proletariat (from Latin) who survived by selling their labour, and y the owners of factories, whom he called the Bourgeoisie (a word having the same origin as burgh and burger) who needed the labour to make a profit. y The exploited class favoured and would benefit from change towards more equality, while the exploiting class resisted such change.

y The materialist interpretation of history, commonly

known as historical materialism, is defined as the application of dialectical materialism to the study of evolution of human societies. It affirms that, just as there are objective laws of history; that consequently a science of history as possible.
y Marxism affirms that there are human wills and that

the clash of these wills plays a great role in historical development.

y Capitalist Exploitation

-the fundamental Marxian theorem - An unjust or improper use of another person for one s own profit - -according to Marx, the reason of class struggle in modern societies

y He analyzed the new industrial society and developed

a philosophy of history and society y Worked with Friedrich Engels y Did not believe that the problems of industrialization could be solved by reforming capitalist society y Insisted that capitalism had to be replaced by a different economic and social system

y Two classes in society- the haves and the have nots y haves control the production of goods and possess

most of the wealth y have nots do the labour but reap no rewards for their work y Bourgeois- hold economic power; middle-class capitalists who own the factories, mines, banks, and businesses y Proletariat- wage-earning laborers

y Man makes religion, religion does not make man y The conception of God was a necessary conception in

a sick world

y Opium of the people - Religion provides anesthesia to the masses - escape from reality - Deters suffering y Sigh of the oppressed - Religion brings with it a safety value - People end up being lulled into the protection religion

seems to offer them - Religion also gives people an opportunity to complain about the ways of the world

Three postulates: 1. He considered matter as the supreme and unique cause of everything 2. Economic structure is the carrying structure of all the other structures that compose society 3. Man is the supreme being y It is in view of man s greatness that Marx considers it necessary to destroy religion

y Ethics is defined as the study of moral standards and

how they affect conduct. Ethics is a major affair in every profession and is a key topic of philosophical discussion. Karl Marx was a man of ethics. One of his main applications was freedom, which to Karl Marx meant determination.1 Marx's opinion was that man is controlled by the prerequisites of nature. The nature of man is comprised of powers, man being uncontrolled, allows him to comprehend the fullness of his powers.

The Communist Manifesto is the declaration of principles and objectives of the Communist League

Das Kapital is a systematic and historical analysis of the economy of the capitalist system of society. .

y Marx did meticulous background research for Das

Kapital in the reading room of the British Museum in London. y Marx lived much of his life in exile and poverty, and his ideas were not widely recognized until after his death. y Marx came from a Jewish family that converted to Christianity to avoid persecution.

y Marx s work aimed to demonstrate that capitalism,

which he clearly loathed but understood as a great driving force towards economic growth suffered a set of internal contradictions in its very philosophy which would eventually cause a great collapse.

y Marx established historical, economic and social

theories which lead to conclusions about capitalism and the reformation in a system of Marxist socialism. A clear evolution of Marx s though can be seen by following his works throughout history; with Kapital being his primary economic piece, eventually, we see a transformation to one of his arguably most important works, Grundrisse, which David McLellan, described as the most fundamental Marxist work.

y Historically, Marx saw that every cycle of history

or,

more so, every economic establishment had a number of forces of production and relationships between them.
y Karl 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.

y It has become fashionable to think that Karl Marx was

not mainly an economist but instead integrated various disciplines economics, sociology, political science, history, and so on into his philosophy.
y According to Marx, CAPITALISM contained the seeds

of its own destruction. Communism was the inevitable end to the process of evolution begun with feudalism and passing through capitalism and SOCIALISM.

y Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic

revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite! --Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848

Books
Bose, Arun, Marx on Exploitation and Inequality, Oxford University Press, 1980. Elis, Elisabeth Gaynor et. Al, World History: Connections today Vol. 1, Pearson Education Inc., 2003. Selsam, Martel, Reader in Marxist Theory, New York Int. Publishers, 1963. Whitney, Loucks, Comparative Economic Systems, Harper & Row Publishers,1938.

Encyclopaedia
"Karl Marx." Microsoft Encarta 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

y y y y y y

Web Pages http://www.trivia-library.com/a/biography-of-famousatheist-karl-marx.htm http://www.scn.org/cmp/modules/soc-marx.htm http://www.politonomist.com/contributions-toeconomics-karl-marx-001451/ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Marx.html http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html http://www.sociologyguide.com/thinkers/Karl-Marx.php