\n\n<\/span>Karl Marx (1818 \u2013 1883)<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n- Historical Materialism,<\/strong><\/mark><\/span><\/li>\n
- Mode of Production<\/mark><\/strong>,<\/strong><\/mark><\/mark><\/mark><\/span><\/li>\n
- Alienation,<\/mark><\/strong><\/mark><\/span><\/li>\n
- Class Struggle<\/mark><\/strong><\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span>Basic Understanding:<\/span>
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\n<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n- Karl Marx\u2019s (1818- 1883)<\/strong>\u00a0thought was strongly influenced by: The dialectical method and historical orientation of\u00a0Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel;\u00a0<\/strong>The classical political economy of\u00a0Adam Smith and David Ricardo;<\/strong>\u00a0French socialist and sociological thought, in particular the thought of\u00a0Jean-Jacques Rousseau.<\/strong>\u00a0Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (present-day Germany). While he attended a Lutheran elementary school growing up, he later became an atheist and a materialist. In 1835, Marx enrolled in Bonn University in Germany where he took courses in law, however, he was much more interested in philosophy and literature. One year later, he enrolled him at the University of Berlin. Marx 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.<\/span><\/li>\n
- After school, Marx turned to writing and journalism to support himself. In 1842 he became the editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper\u00a0Rheinische Zeitung,\u00a0<\/strong>but the Berlin government prohibited it from publication the following year. He then moved to Brussels, Belgium, where he founded the German Workers\u2019 Party and was active in the Communist League. Here he wrote his most famous work Communist Manifesto. After being exiled from Belgium and France, Marx finally settled in London where he lived as a stateless exile for the rest of his life.<\/span><\/li>\n
- In London, Marx worked in journalism and wrote for both German and English language publications. From 1852 to 1862 he was also 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.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Marx\u2019s theories about society, economics and politics, which are collectively known as marxism, argue that all society progresses through the dialectic of class struggle.<\/strong>\u00a0He was heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, which he called the \u201cdictatorship of the bourgeoisie,\u201d 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 \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat.\u201d he believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called pure communism.<\/span><\/li>\n
- 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. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the \u201cthinker of the millennium\u201d by people from around the world.<\/span><\/li>\n
- In the late 1830s radical criticism for extreme change in existing socio-political conditions was made by the young Hegelians (a group of people following the philosophy of Hegel). This was the group with which Marx became formally associated when he was studying law and philosophy at the University of Berlin.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- Hegel\u2019s philosophy was humanist in treating humanity as occupying a special, central place in the whole historical process and seeing that the very point of history was to improve and fulfil the human spirit. His ideas certainly had immense impact; he dominated German intellectual life and influenced most young German philosophers of the time. One of these was Marx, who appropriated much of Hegel\u2019s scheme, certainly in his early writings.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Hegel: the dialectic of history:<\/span><\/h3>\n\n- Hegel\u00a0<\/strong>was the most influential thinker of the first half of the nineteenth century in Germany and, arguably, in Europe as a whole.\u00a0Hegel\u2019s philosophy aimed to give an account of history-as-a-whole.\u00a0<\/strong>The history of all humanity can, he argued, be grasped as a single, unified, organised and rational progress. History might look like a mere accidental succession, one thing after another in a rather disorganised, chaotic sequence, but that impression is only superficial. Seen in the right way, history can be recognised as making up a coherent story about development and progress. Progress is not smooth, continuous and cumulative, but, rather, comes through struggle, conflict and discontinuity, which none the less is of an essentially logical kind.<\/span><\/li>\n
- The crucial idea is that conflict is itself an orderly process, consisting in the creation and overcoming of oppositions. Compare the history of human beings to the growth of a plant from a seed. The seed contains the plant, and out of the seed grows the plant, destroying the seed. Thus the life of the plant is the development of the seed into what it has the potential to become: first, the shoot, eventually the fully grown plant. In the same way, consider history as the life of humanity, and see, therefore, that history is merely the unfolding of the potential which was present at the earliest stage of its being. History is the natural expression of the essential nature of human beings, just as the plant is the natural expression of the essential nature of the seed. Humanity must itself develop into what it has the potential to become.Note that Hegel takes it for granted that his history is a collective one, i.e. it is a history of humanity as a whole, or of large groups of people, not of particular individuals. Just as the seed is destined to turn into a plant of a specific kind, human beings\u2014 Hegel argues\u2014are destined to develop towards complete freedom.<\/span><\/li>\n
- What human beings essentially are will never be fully expressed if their capacity for development<\/span>
\nis restricted, inhibited by circumstances; the potential of humanity will only be fully developed when they are truly free, which means free of all circumstantial inhibition. Over the course of history, human beings necessarily represent something less than the true or full nature of humanity. For just as the full potential of the seed is only realised when the plant is fully matured, so the full potential of human beings will only be realised after the period of growth\u2014i.e. history\u2014is over. The achievement of complete freedom will be the \u2018finished growth\u2019 of human beings. Consequently, there will be an end to history. Since history is a process of change through which humanity develops its full potential, then when that has been realised there can be no further development and therefore no further history. History is directed towards an end in two senses:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- In the form of a particular result;<\/span><\/li>\n
- In being directed towards a literal end or finish.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
In what sense does humanity develop?<\/span><\/h4>\n\n- For Hegel,<\/strong>\u00a0the primary manifestation of development was\u00a0the development of the intellectual life, of the mind or spirit, the german term used by hegel is zeitgeist (i.e. \u2018spirit of the age\u2019).<\/strong>\u00a0He held it to be plain, if one studied the history of a given people, that their art, religion and philosophy would at any given time have a certain uniformity, a common cast of mind, a shared outlook.<\/span><\/li>\n
- This concept reaffirms Hegel\u2019s collectivist aspect, for it was his firm conviction that the commonality across many different thinkers was not a matter of mere coincidence; individuals were driven by larger, widespread influences affecting them all in similar ways. In short, the mind or the spirit that drives the historical process is the mind of humanity, as manifested in particular peoples and periods, not the mind of individual thinkers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Idealism:<\/span><\/h5>\n\n- Hegel\u2019s study of the mind was the study of the development of ideas, so naturally he concentrated upon those areas of society that were creative or expressive of ideas: art, abstract thought (particularly philosophy) and religion.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- Hence hegel is termed an idealis.<\/strong>\u00a0he thought that the true nature of history and human existence was to be understood in terms of the development of thought, of ideas.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Dialectical logic:<\/span><\/h5>\n\n- Classically, truth is often sought in discussion\u2014in dialogue, or dialectic. Hegel bases his logic on the model of discussion exemplified by Socrates in classical times. Discussion originates in disagreement, the conflict of oppositions, which spurs debate. The argument proceeds by the putting of one position and the countering of it by another, opposed position. The search for truth is not about standing pat on one\u2019s own position, but about attempting to reach agreement with one\u2019s opponent, to arrive at a conclusion both can accept. It incorporates elements of each of the two previously opposed positions, but now combines them in a third, new position that is improved and superior.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- In grossly simplified terms, we may glimpse Hegel\u2019s dialectical logic as an exposition of the way in which seeming opposites can be reconciled and combined in a new unity<\/strong>. Of course, arriving at an agreed position might end that discussion, but it does not end all discussion, for this newly agreed position will be put in some other conversation, will provoke a counter-statement, initiate a new debate and a search for yet another more inclusive, mutually acceptable conclusion, and so on.<\/span><\/li>\n
- This logical progression is the very stuff of history. Hegel is saying that history arises from conflict. Far from conflict being an undesirable and unnecessary blemish upon the face of human existence, it is the driver of history, the essential motor of progress. Conflict engenders new and better ideas and pushes towards a more comprehensive understanding. Conflict is not only necessary, but also productive, for conflicts are eventually resolved and result in improved outcomes before yet further conflicts are initiated.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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