Karl Marx

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David Conrad 7/28/2013

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Germany, to an upper-middle class Jewish family, but due to the Prussian anti-Jewish laws they converted to Christianity. His family really wanted him to study law like his father (whom was a lawyer) but Karl did not want to be a lawyer, He loved Philosophy and wanted to study that. While studying Law at the University of Bonn, he met the love of his life, Jenny von Westphalen.(5) Whom was very wealthy and four years older than Karl, which back then was very untraditional to date an older woman. When Karl was about 22 years old he proposed to Jenny under the condition that she wait until he get his P.H.D. When he was 25 and Jenny was 29, He finally got his P.H.D. and the two of them got married.(5) A huge influence on Karls philosophy was Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel, from whom he derived the crucial concept of alienation and the notion of historical evolution as an ongoing struggle.(2) Although he had his P.H.D he himself never got wealthy. Instead of getting a high paying job he decided to be a journalist. Due to his radical left wing socialist views he found it incredibly difficult to find a publisher.(2) He moved to Cologne, which was known to house a strong liberal opposition movement. While in Cologne he met a radical by the name of Moses Hess, whom organized socialist meeting s, while at these meetings Karl learned of the struggles in the German working class. So he wrote an article on the poverty of the Mosel wine farmers and in the article he was highly critical of the government. The article was published in 1943, when it was published the Prussian government was furious and threatened him with arrest. So he and his wife left Germany and fled to Paris, France.(1,2) During his time in Paris, he became a communist, and worked almost solely on studying the political economy and the history of the French Revolution. He wrote a number of papers know as konomisch-philosophiche Manuskripte aus dem jahre (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844). Although these papers were not published until the 1930s. They were strongly influenced Feuerbach

and they outlined a Humanist idea of communism. He contrasts the capitalist society, and an alienated nature of labor. In 1844 He reviewed the book on the Jewish Question.(2) In the text on the Jewish Question , he distances himself between himself and his radical liberal colleagues. He introduced a distinction between political emancipation the grant of liberal rights and liberties- and human emancipation. He said that political emancipation is completely compatible with the continued existence of religion (even though Karl was an atheist), as the example of the U.S demonstrates. He argues that that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation but it acts as a barrier (although he is still for political emancipation). Liberal rights and ideas of justice are based on the idea that each individual human needs protection from other people. Freedom on such a view, is freedom of interference. He believed that true freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people of our community, it is not found in isolation. He believed such political emancipated liberalism must be on a genuine route to human emancipation. Unfortunately, it appears Karl never explains to us what his idea of human emancipation is.(1) In 1845 he was expelled from France for his same radical liberal political views that he was expelled from Germany for. After he left France he made his way over to England. While he was in England he met back up with the Communist league.(2) He was very confident that there would be more revolutionary action throughout Europe, but he believed that there would only be a revolution if there was a crisis of some sort. He had hoped that he would uncover what the crises would be. So he spent most of the rest of his life in the British Museum studying the political economy.(3) While in London, even though karl made a small amount of money for writing articles to the New York Tribune, his family almost primarily lived on the support of Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), whom was a good friend and student of Karl. When he was in his early sixties his wife passed away, it made him very heartbroken and depressed the rest of his life. The last ten years of his life his health declined rapidly, so he could not

work as quick nor as productively as he did earlier in his life. He still paid very close attention to politics, especially the politics of Russia and Germany, even in such poor health. He died at the age of sixty five, from a heart attack in the year 1883. Although he spent more than half of his life in England he never considered himself and English philosopher. He always thought of himself a German one, because he loved Germany that much.(5,2) While still alive he had a very interesting philosophy, in his ontology he believed that only matter does exist, and that all spiritual and intellectual things have to be reduced to nature. (Radical Materialism). In other words everything can be answered by science. He believed that nature is not still, it is in the endless process of changed and development. He was a radical militant atheist, he strongly believed that god did NOT exist. He said that religion is the opium of the people. As in it is addicting and although it makes people feel comfortable it is wrong and religion is not the answer. He believed we should all do away with religion. He believed that reality is material and that consequently the material conditions of life control reality.(5) In his epistemology he believed that the essence of society is the system of its economic relationships, and that the essence of the human person is their economic status. Both of those together are called economic determination. He believe that the highest form of human knowledge is science, and that social sciences have to be AS precise and objective as social sciences. As I stated before he thought science is the answer to everything. He said that the more scientific philosophy is the better it is. He believed that theoretical science is better than factual science because it can deeper reflect on the essence of things. He believed that the structure of society consists of two levels: 1) the basic structure: the economy and 2) the secondary structure: all other, non-economical social relationships. He said that human history is not a set of accidental events, but is has its iron logic as the sequence of the five social, economic formations: 1) primitive communal, 2)slave, 3)fendal 4) capitalist and 5) communist.(5) Also

according to karl history is the ongoing result of a constant tension between the upper class and rulers, and the ruled and exploited underclass.(3) He believed that although capitalism was good and had its benefits but eventually the negative side of it will eventually destroy capitalism. Some of the benefits of capitalism in his opinion are: it has an effective economy, it has advance technology, and promotes it. It has a disciplined workforce. It has an excellent education. It has some political freedoms that other societies do not have. It promotes mass media, and finally it allows trade unions. In contrast the negative side of capitalism in his opinion (which will eventually destroy capitalism) are: that capitalism exploits the working class. It causes economic inequality, crises, and depression. Capitalism has a high level of unemployment and poverty. It promotes the oppression of minorities and women. Capitalism has a restriction of political activity. It causes alienation, drug use, and has a high crime rate.(5) Out of all the negatives he believed that alienation was the worst negative, a term he derived from Hegel. He thought it revealed an inherent irrationality, an inherent evil in the basis of capitalism. Alienation happens when workers are no longer happy with the product of their labor. It is a state of powerless, frustration, repressed resentment and despair. It results from the transformation of a human being into a commodity.(4) He believed that it was possible to build a perfect society and that the answer he called the communist utopia. In order to reach the communist utopia capitalism has to fall, then there will be a revolution of the proletariat (poor). After the revolution there will be the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will lead to socialism, and finally communism.(5) The idea of communism is that there will be no privately owned property. There will be no money, banks or private transactions in communism. There will also not be any private businesss, political parties, government, no military, and no institution of marriage. There will be however, a

communal, collective property (everyone shares property), everything will be free, creative labor, total equality for everyone, a collective self-government, peace and free love. Karl said from everyone, according to his or her skill, to everyone according to his or her needs. In other words everyone will work according to what their skills are, and they will do the best that they can at what they do, but they will receive things according to what they need, not how much work they did. In my personal opinion this idea is a brilliant one but it will never work, due to the fact that nobody will be motivated to work because they will receive what they need not what they earned from their work.(5) I chose Karl Marxs philosophy because in my opinion his philosophy is very interesting, and incredibly brilliant if it were able to work the way he wanted to. If there were a way to make everyone motivated to work and fix a few other issues with communism, I think it would be a very good society to live in. I completely agree with his views of religion and god, in my opinion though religion is holding humanity and science back. There would also be a lot less war and violence without religion. (at least in my opinion) I learned a lot writing this paper and found the life and philosophy of Karl incredibly interesting.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) "Karl Marx (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 23 Aug. 2003. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/>. 2) "Karl Marx - German Philosopher - Biography." The European Graduate School - Media and Communication - Graduate & Postgraduate Studies Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.egs.edu/library/karl-marx/biography/>. 3) "Marxist Philosophy." Worldviews - AllAboutWorldview.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.allaboutworldview.org/marxist-philosophy.htm>. 4) Soccio, Douglas J.. Archetypes of wisdom. 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1995. Print. 5) Izrailevsky, Alexander. "The Materialist: Karl Marx." Philosophy 1010. Salt Lake Community College. South City Campus, Salt Lake City. 15 July 2013. Class lecture.