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    Marx in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Marx in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Marx in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Marx in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes

    By Walther Ziegler

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    Never before or since has a single philosopher produced such a tremendous effect as Karl Marx. His great vision of a society without private property was heeded worldwide and had huge historical effects. Allegiance to his ideas was proclaimed by revolutionaries, parties, governments and states. Marxism spread all around the globe. Marxist revolutions occurred in countries as different as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua and Mozambique as well as many others, until at one point almost a third of humanity were living under communism. But some hundred years after Marx’s death the communist world that he had inspired fell apart. After the fall of the Iron Curtain many claimed that Marx had been entirely in error and that the sole viable economic system is really capitalism after all. It was hoped that democracy, market economy, and a fair distribution of wealth could all be combined together. But this optimism did not last long. The global economic and financial crises of recent decades have profoundly shaken belief in the power of the market to regulate itself. It has become ever clearer that capitalism does indeed display the structural flaws that Marx described in his main work, Capital. Certain of Marx’s predictions, such as the forming of powerful economic monopolies and the ever-growing gulf between rich and poor, have already come true. Others can be seen approaching on the horizon of current social developments. His acute critique of capitalism is, then, more relevant today than ever. There is no question but that Marx still has a lot to say to us. The book Marx in 60 Minutes explains in clear and perspicuous terms, using some seventy key quotations from Marx’s works, such topics as the materialist philosophy of history, the doctrine of “base and superstructure”, Marx’s critique of religion, and the analyses developed in Capital of “surplus value”, capital accumulation, and the immiseration of the workers. In the second part of the book, entitled “Of what use is Marx’s discovery to us today?”, Marx’s insights are applied to the present situation. The book forms part of the popular series Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks on Demand
    Release dateJul 19, 2016
    ISBN9783741230110
    Marx in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Author

    Walther Ziegler

    Walther Ziegler est professeur d'université et docteur en philosophie. En tant que correspondant à l'étranger, reporter et directeur de l'information de la chaîne de télévision allemande ProSieben, il a produit des films sur tous les continents. Ses reportages ont été récompensés par plusieurs prix. En 2007, il a prit la direction de la « Medienakademie » à Munich, une Université des Sciences Appliquées et y forme depuis des cinéastes et des journalistes. Il est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages philosophiques, qui ont été publiés en plusieurs langues dans le monde entier. En sa qualité de journaliste de longue date, il parvient à résumer la pensée complexe des grands philosophes de manière passionnante et accessible à tous.

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    • 1/5
      Political cartoon books are created to propagandize children, fitting in the case of Marx as only children would be foolish enough to believe the completely deluded rantings of this 19th century psychopath. Well, children and college professors, anyway. If there is a difference.

    Book preview

    Marx in 60 Minutes - Walther Ziegler

    My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the English editions of this series of books.

    My special thanks go to my translator

    Dr Alexander Reynolds.

    Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the needs of English-language readers.

    Contents

    Marx’s Great Discovery

    Marx’s Central Idea

    Man’s Basic Material Needs

    Work

    Base and Superstructure

    Religion as ‘the Opium of the People’

    History as Class Struggle

    The Theory of Surplus Value

    Accumulation and Concentration

    Immiseration and Revolution

    The Withering Away of the State

    Alienation

    Ending Alienation

    The Realm of Freedom

    Of What Use Is Marx’s Discovery for Us Today?

    Beware of the Sorceror – How Can Man Maintain Control?

    Every Era Has Its Ideology, Even Our Own – The Critique of Ideology Today

    Making the „Realm of Freedom" a Reality – Work is Just a Staging Post

    Egoism May Bring Success – But Man Finds Completion Only as a Species-Being

    Bibliographical References

    Marx’s Great Discovery

    The philosophical effort undertaken by Marx (1818-1883) was an enormous one. He was the first to attempt to decipher the law of motion of the whole of human history. He wanted to draw from the course of history prior to his own day certain precise insights about future developments, so that this history could be guided in a more rational direction.

    Such an enterprise appears at first sight impossible, even megalomaniac. How can a human being – even a philosopher, however wise and far-sighted – predict the future, let alone hope to exert an influence on future historical developments?

    But Karl Marx did in fact succeed in drawing philosophical, economic and socio-political conclusions from past and present events which were, in later years, really borne out in many nations. Some hundred years after his death a third of the human race was living in states whose social systems bore Marx’s name. In the course of the last century, Marxism spread across the entire world. Never before or since has an individual philosopher had such a huge effect.

    Social conditions in Marx’s own lifetime – particularly the working conditions in the newly-emerged factories – were catastrophic. Not just men, but women and children too, had to work twelve to fourteen hours a day and the living conditions and hygiene levels in the slums these workers lived in were an offence to human dignity. Marx considered it his duty to take the part of those who were suffering in this way and to bring about revolutionary change.

    But Marx was of the view that it was not just his task but that of all philosophers to work toward the improvement of society. Philosophers, he argued, should no longer, as they had for two thousand years, be content with understanding and interpreting the world. Writing on the near-contemporary philosopher Feuerbach, Marx declared:

    Thus, the young Marx observed, for several years, as a journalist and philosopher, the day-to-day politics, history, and economic development of Europe until he believed he had gained an understanding of the causes of all these processes. Humanity’s whole development, he concluded, from antiquity right up to the present day, consisted in a necessary sequence of great conflicts between different social groupings:

    There occur, Marx argued, at regular intervals great revolutions which radically alter the way in which society is ruled and, with this, its economic foundations. Marx himself, along with his family, lived through just such a time of revolutions. He supported, in his newspaper articles, Germany’s revolution of 1848, composing in this year, together with his friend Engels, the

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