Karl Marx

The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary

•Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home in Trier on the river Moselle in Germany on May 5, 1818. •Marx died March 14, 1883. •In 1930 the publication of Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, outlined a humanist conception of communism, influenced by the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach and based on a contrast between the alienated nature of labor under capitalism and a communist society in which human beings freely developed their nature in cooperative production. • The German Ideology, of which the basic thesis was that "the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production." Marx traced the history of the various modes of production and predicted the collapse of the present one -- industrial capitalism -- and its replacement by communism.•By 1857 he had produced a gigantic 800 page manuscript on capital, landed property, wage labor, the state, foreign trade and the world market. The Grundrisse was not published until 1941.

•It was not until 1867 that Marx was able to publish the first results of his work in volume 1 of Capital, a work which analyzed the capitalist process of production. In Capital, Marx elaborated his version of the labor theory value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation which would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit in the collapse of industrial capitalism. Volumes II and III were finished during the 1860s but Marx worked on the manuscripts for the rest of his life and they were published posthumously by Engels.•Marx's contribution to our understanding of society has been enormous. His thought is not the comprehensive system evolved by some of his followers under the name of dialectical materialism. The very dialectical nature of his approach meant that it was usually tentative and open-ended. There was also the tension between Marx the political activist and Marx the student of political economy. Many of his expectations about the future course of the revolutionary movement have, so far, failed to materialize. However, his stress on the economic factor in society and his analysis of the class structure in class conflict have had an enormous influence on history, sociology, and study of human culture.

So what really is A Marxist?A Marxist has a certain kind of practice, a way of living and working, that we call being a Communist. A Marxist's thought is based on this daily practice, a science of logic called Dialectics. Thus, Marxism is both a theory and a practice. The theories of Marxism are based on a scientific method of thought called dialectical materialism; to be clear there is no one answer to a question -- theory is based on a particular set of conditions that are always finite, and thus, any theory is necessarily limited. To test the validity of theory, Marxists rely on empirical evidence as the criteria of truth. Using such a methodology Marx and Engels examined history, which lead them to explain theories on the class struggle, the basis of social relations through economics, and the form of society that would follow capitalism. These theories are not immutable truths, they follow something similar to the scientific method: a hypothesis that explains observable events; a hypothesis which remains valid only so long as it does not conflict with reality.

Things Said By Marx •The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality.

•Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.

•Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power. •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!