Background
On May 5, 1818, Karl Heinrich Marx, son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in Trier, Germany on the river Moselle.
Marx's grandfather on his father's side was a well-known rabbi in Trier.
Marx household in Trier, GermanyOccupied by Karl Marx from 1818-1835 Both Marx's Uncle Samuel and his father, originally named Hirschel, devoted themselves to their work. Samuel (1781-1829) took the role of his father's occupation as Rabbi of Trier. Hirschel Marx (1782-1838) forged a different path with his life. He became a Justizrat, a lawyer, and abondoned his Jewish faith for Christianity in 1824 so that he could find success in his occupation more easily, rather than undergoing the nation's anti-Semitic lifestyle of the time. He took the first name of Heinrich. He later married Henrietta Pressburg, a Dutch Jewess, who came from a century-long line of rabbis. Henrietta Pressburg died in 1863. The pair at four surviving children at the time of their deaths: Sophie, Emilie, Luise, and Karl (Mehring 1918). Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home. Marx has never spoken of any high school companions, and neither have they spoken of him. He completed his high school curriculum on August 25, 1835. During his high school career, Marx was credited with being able to comprehend difficult passages that his fellow schoolmates could not analyze. His deep understanding of his subjects portrayed his superior thought process, however his interpretations for also heavily weighted down with matters that some of his teachers and classmates found unsuitable (Mehring 1918). Karl Marx shared many of the common anti-Semitic views of his country, especially in his immature years. Though the popularity of hatred towards Jews does not justify Marx’s early views of the religion, his self-loathing and rebellion against his parents sheds more light on the subject.
To many, Marx may have seemed like a raging anti-Semite. In his younger years, Marx commonly associated Judaism with capitalism, possibly because of his own perspective of his families “frugality” with money. Common stereotypes of Jews during that time were of stinginess, greed, and cheapness. Marx would later become known for spending large sums of money in very short periods of time as a sort of silent rebellion against his parents and his Jewish heritage. Marx would also be well known for his poetry and philosophies of self-loathing, which could further explain his prejudice towards the Jews. However, in his more mature years, hardly any connection between Jews and capitalism is mentioned. In fact, in his later years, Marx came to the aid of a few Jewish organizations. Marx’s complicated relationship with Judaism did not occur out of spite for the religion or the people themselves, but rather out of the commonly perceived connection between the race and the throws of capitalism, which Marx had so longed to overthrow in favor of a socialistic government (Blanchard 1984).
That autumn, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn, where he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a man who had great influence over Marx in his younger years and can be held responsible for Marx's deep interest in Romanticism.Jenny was a playmate of Marx's childhood and a close friend of his elder sister Sophie. Marx's father believed that Jenny had "something of genius" in her, which set her apart from the typical women of her age (Mehring 1918).
Young Jenny von Westphalen, future wife of Karl Marx
Young Jenny von Westphalan, future wife of Karl Marx
There is much complaint in the letters from Marx's father to his son during Karl's year at Bonn. It is true that Karl was commonly careless with the monthly allowance that his father would send him. Karl was sometimes known to spend 50 thalers in one night. Most likely because of this frivolous spending and socializing, not to mention the duel that Karl managed to get into during his time at Bonn, Heinrich sent his son to the more serious University of Berlin, where Karl remained for the next 4 years (Spartacus Educational). During this time at his new university, Marx abandoned his Romantic views for Hegelianism, which ruled in Berlin at the time (Kreis 2008). These Hegelianistic views did not sprout from Marx by his own accord, but rather from the influence of one of his lecturers at Berlin, Bruno Bauer, who was both an athiest and political radical. Bauer was the one who had shown the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, a former professor of philosophy at Berlin, to Marx. For Marx, One of Hegel's most intriguing theories was that a thing, whether it be a role of society or a personal view, could not separated from its opposite. The only way for unity was to equalize the opposites by the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (Spartacus Educational).
G. W. F. Hegel, former professor of Berlin and great influence on Marx
After the death of his father in 1838, Marx now faced the challenge of making his own livelihood. He longed for a teaching position as a university professor at Bonn. After completing his PhD thesis on philosophy, specifically, comparing the views of Epicurus and Democritis, and his doctorate at the University of Jena, Marx hoped Bauer would help him find a position at Bonn (Wolff 2010). However, in 1842 Bauer was dismissed due to his radical views and was unable to help Marx, who was also facing his own hardships being involved with the young group of radical Hegelians. Luckily, Marx found a break in the field of journalism. After moving to the well-known liberal area of the Cologne Circle, Marx wrote an article for their newspaper the Rheinische Zeitung, or The Rhenish Gazette. The group was so impressed by Marx's article that they appointed him chief editor in October of 1842. During his time in Cologne, Marx befriended a man by the name of Moses Hess, who proclaimed himself to be a socialist. Marx became fascinated by Hess's views and attended many socialist meetings (Spartacus Educational). These new views on society inspired Marx to write many articles for his newspaper on economic questions. However, when the Prussian government read The Rhenish Gazette and the articles which seemed to threaten loyalty to capital government, the newspaper was shut down (Kreis 2008). Sensing that his outspoken attitude in Germany would get him into deeper trouble, Marx quickly married Jenny von Westphalen and emigrated to France (Kreis 2008). Here, Marx was offered the position of editor for a new political journal called the Franco-German Annals. Accompanying him to the Annals was Bauer, Michael Bakunin, and Friedrich Engels, who would become very close with Marx over the course of their lives and assist him in writing works such as The Holy Family and the popular Communist Manifesto (Spartacus Educational).
Marx and Engels, friends and fellow political philosophers In Paris, Marx began mixing with the working class for the first time. He admired the camaraderie of the workers and believed that they would eventually free society of the capitalist government through revolt. Soon Marx developed a humanist branch of communism. In 1844, he wrote the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, through which he developed his ideas on the concept of alienation. In the capitalist society, Marx identified three types of alienation:1. The worker is alienated from his production.2. The worker is alienated from himself; only when he is not working is he truly himself.3. People are alienated from each because of competition in the capitalist society.When Marx published articles proclaiming his communist views, the authorities quickly shut him down yet again (Spartacus Educational).Shortly after in 1844, Marx was again forced to move, this time to Brussels. This is where he developed a manuscript for the German Ideology, in which he predicted a collapse of industrial capitalism and the rise of communism, along with The Poverty of Philosophy. Marx also joined the Communist League in the center of London, inspiring him to publish his Communist Manifesto with Engels in 1848 (Kreis 2008).Marx moved back to Paris early in 1848 and founded the New Rhenish Gazette. A revolution was breaking out across Germany and Marx had hoped for the same reaction in Paris. However, Marx's writings were suppressed and he was forced to seek refuge in May of 1949 in London, a place to which he would remain for the rest of his life. Prussian authorities put much pressure on the British government to close their doors to Marx. However, Prime Minister John Russell's liberal views on freedom of speech and expression allowed Marx into England. During the first half of the 1850s, the Marx family lived in poverty, first in Chelsea from which they were evicted for failing to pay the rent, then in a three room flat in Soho, surviving only off of the money that Engels could raise. Of Karl and Jenny's six children, only three survived (Spartacus Educational).
Engels and Marx with Marx's three daughters During the 1860s, Marx continued publishing communist pamphlets and articles. His larger works were often put on hold due to his devotion to the First International, to which he was elected to council in 1864. He actively lead the struggle against the anarchist wing of Bakunin. However, in 1872, after the transfer from London to New York, led to the decline of the International. After the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, The Civil War in France (Kreis 2008). The last decade of Marx's life has been deemed by some as a "slow death." has been called “a slow death,” and it is true that the struggles which took place after the Commune dealt a serious blow to his health (Mehring 1918). The death of his eldest daughter and his wife did not improve his condition either. Marx's health slowly dwindled until his death on March 14, 1883 (Kreis 2008).
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark. Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
~Eulogy by Friedrich Engels on March 17, 1883 (Kreis 2008)
Karl Marx's grave at Highgate Cemetery in North London List of Selected Works by Karl Marx:
The Civil War in France (1871)
Communist Manifesto (1848)
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
Critique of Gotha Program (1875)
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841)
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
The German Ideology (1846)
Grundrisse (1858)
The Holy Family (1844)
Das Kapital (1867)
On the Jewish Question (1843)
The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (1851)
The Civil War in the United States (1861)
Theses on Feuerbach (1845)
Wage Labour and Capital (1847)
(Wolff 2010)
Human Nature and Society
"The entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the begetting of man through human labor, nothing but the coming-to-be of nature for man."This passage is frequently quoted in Marx's works to describe the relationship between nature and and history, and nature and humans (Zhang 2006). Unlike the common sense perspective of human nature, in which the nature in unchanging and unaffected by the condition or state of the human, Marx believed that human nature varied greatly in different environments. Though Marx disagreed with the typical views of human nature, this does not mean that he rejected the idea entirely. Marx was highly concerned with the question of human nature. He argued the only similar feature in all human societies was the need for labor and produce in order to survive. Human beings were like animals, given the fact that they must work on nature to survive. The difference, however, between humans and animals lies in the recognition of consciousness. Animals work from repetition. Whereas humans work from change. On the topic of discussion, one of Marx's famous quotations from his work Das Kapital reads as follows:
"A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement."
Marx believed that people can change their own nature by acting on the world around themselves. Through this dynamic relationship, where the laborer shapes the world he lives in, the laborer also shapes himself. Marx referred to this ability for conscious labor as the 'species-being.' The individual, being a social being, relies on its fellow earth inhabitants to get what it needs to survive. Through unity of labor all is possible. When society found that it was able to produce more than was necessary, member of society, in a way, freed themselves from labor, or human nature depending on perspective. And so the class society was born. Unfortunately, because of this freedom to some but not to all, alienation between the laborers and the well-off occurred, dividing the interests of one from the interests of the whole. However, this alienation does not exist in all human societies, and therefore human nature is different depending on the conditions (Cox 1998). Marx believed that capitalism distorted human nature and that the only way to free a society from the throws of capitalism was through socialist and communist revolutions. Marx deduced that capitalism estranged human beings from their own nature (Marx and Engels on Human Nature). According to Marx, capitalism is merely a stage in history that will eventually give way to the working class, which becomes less fortunate and larger in population. One the capitalist regime is deposed, the working class will create a society with wages, no money, and no social classes. Soon after that, all of human society will become one and there will be no state (Tucker 1978).
To fully understand Marx's views on human nature, it must also be understood that Marx saw labor as a desirable activity for humans. However, obstacles such as slavery, feudalism, and capitalism made labor seem repulsive to most. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx states that social relations are not born of human nature but by economic relations, which can be transformed through evolution. Marx spent his life seeking to understand how capitalism had evolved into the monster that he saw before him, and how men who seemed equal in his eyes could have control over one another (Marx and Engels on Human Nature).
Through history and economics, Marx believed that human nature is discoverable. Without science, any interpretation of human nature would be biased, which means the religion, philosophy, and other judgements from similar sources are all biased. To go on further, if science alone can discover human nature, then it is not a matter of religion or philosophy. Marx saw the road to reducing misery through the study of human nature, not religion by any means. Marx viewed religion as merely a sedative or drug that would temporarily relieve pain and suffering. Like drugs, religion would allow people to be careless and forgetful of their problems. Marx saw religion as the creation of humans, not the other way around. It all comes back to capitalism then. Capitalism can then use religion to oppress the working class and promote their own selfish desires. Capitalists can do this because religion provides reasoning for suffering (Tucker 1978).
Marxism Today
The problem with a Marxist government is that people are naturally selfish and defensive of what is theirs. Therefore Marxism can never be truly realized in the real world governments, when those who work hard do not want to relinquish their money to those who do little to nothing at all. So as result, those who have attempted to install a Marxist government, end up establishing a totalitarian government instead, where the citizens are violently forced into giving up produce, rather than giving it up willingly as Marx would have expected. This is how the world has ended up with governments such as the Republic of Cuba. In its attempts to establish a Marxist government, Cuba has gone in somewhat of a different direction than Marx would have hoped. The people of Cuba do not object to true socialism, but rather the government's authoritarian, violent extremist way of enforcing that brand of politics. In fact, many of the people of Cuba probably do not know the true socialism of Marx and Engels, which preaches democracy, humanity, liberty, and self-management (Campos 2011).
In reality, Marxism works best in governments in smaller doses. For example, the United States has socialist policies such as the Welfare System, taxation, and redistribution. However, these policies are limited enough that they do not incite widespread discourse. Catholicism vs. Marxism Catholicism and Marxism are similar in the aspect that they both preach for the giving of oneself for the betterment of the whole. The difference of course is that the Catholic Church sees giving as fulfilling God's will to benefit all through his creations, whereas Marxism is a matter of fulfilling human nature to survive off of one another. The Catholic understanding is that there is a "social mortgage" that is entrusted to the people of the Church to care for product rather than to consume and use for themselves. It is a sign of respect to God.Marxism, in a seemingly complicated definition, is a more extreme Catholicism without religion. Its demands are to share wealth so that all are equal. Everyone is entitled to a fair share of product. In the Catholic perspective, every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency, such as food, shelter, clothing, employment, healthcare, and education. Each person must also uphold duties to their family and fellow citizens. The call to help the poor, similar to Marxism, is to show how the deprivation and powerlessness of the poor hurts the whole community.
As far as government goes, Marx wanted no formal government but rather for the working class to govern themselves. Catholicism requires that the state should have a positive moral function. It is meant to promote human dignity, protect human rights, and work for the good of the whole. Here is a somewhat socialist view from the Church as well, that the people may have the power of government so long as they govern themselves adequately. If they cannot, then the government shall have to intervene (Major Themes).
VS.
References: Blanchard, William H. "Karl Marx and the Jewish Question." Political Psychology. 3rd ed. Vol. 5. International Society of Political Psychology, 1984. 365-74. Web.
Campos, Pedro. "Cuba: The True Counter-revolution." Havana Times.org » Open-minded Writing from Cuba. 8 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Sept. 2011.
<http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=48314>.
"Marx and Engels on Human Nature." Revolutionary Socialist Culture of Peace. Strategy for Revolution in 21st Century. Web. 12 Sept. 2011. <http://sfr-21.org/human-nature.html>.
Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883)
BackgroundOn May 5, 1818, Karl Heinrich Marx, son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in Trier, Germany on the river Moselle.
Marx's grandfather on his father's side was a well-known rabbi in Trier.
Marx household in Trier, GermanyOccupied by Karl Marx from 1818-1835
Both Marx's Uncle Samuel and his father, originally named Hirschel, devoted themselves to their work. Samuel (1781-1829) took the role of his father's occupation as Rabbi of Trier. Hirschel Marx (1782-1838) forged a different path with his life. He became a Justizrat, a lawyer, and abondoned his Jewish faith for Christianity in 1824 so that he could find success in his occupation more easily, rather than undergoing the nation's anti-Semitic lifestyle of the time. He took the first name of Heinrich. He later married Henrietta Pressburg, a Dutch Jewess, who came from a century-long line of rabbis. Henrietta Pressburg died in 1863. The pair at four surviving children at the time of their deaths: Sophie, Emilie, Luise, and Karl (Mehring 1918).
Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home. Marx has never spoken of any high school companions, and neither have they spoken of him. He completed his high school curriculum on August 25, 1835. During his high school career, Marx was credited with being able to comprehend difficult passages that his fellow schoolmates could not analyze. His deep understanding of his subjects portrayed his superior thought process, however his interpretations for also heavily weighted down with matters that some of his teachers and classmates found unsuitable (Mehring 1918).
Karl Marx shared many of the common anti-Semitic views of his country, especially in his immature years. Though the popularity of hatred towards Jews does not justify Marx’s early views of the religion, his self-loathing and rebellion against his parents sheds more light on the subject.
To many, Marx may have seemed like a raging anti-Semite. In his younger years, Marx commonly associated Judaism with capitalism, possibly because of his own perspective of his families “frugality” with money. Common stereotypes of Jews during that time were of stinginess, greed, and cheapness. Marx would later become known for spending large sums of money in very short periods of time as a sort of silent rebellion against his parents and his Jewish heritage. Marx would also be well known for his poetry and philosophies of self-loathing, which could further explain his prejudice towards the Jews. However, in his more mature years, hardly any connection between Jews and capitalism is mentioned. In fact, in his later years, Marx came to the aid of a few Jewish organizations. Marx’s complicated relationship with Judaism did not occur out of spite for the religion or the people themselves, but rather out of the commonly perceived connection between the race and the throws of capitalism, which Marx had so longed to overthrow in favor of a socialistic government (Blanchard 1984).
That autumn, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn, where he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a man who had great influence over Marx in his younger years and can be held responsible for Marx's deep interest in Romanticism.Jenny was a playmate of Marx's childhood and a close friend of his elder sister Sophie. Marx's father believed that Jenny had "something of genius" in her, which set her apart from the typical women of her age (Mehring 1918).
There is much complaint in the letters from Marx's father to his son during Karl's year at Bonn. It is true that Karl was commonly careless with the monthly allowance that his father would send him. Karl was sometimes known to spend 50 thalers in one night. Most likely because of this frivolous spending and socializing, not to mention the duel that Karl managed to get into during his time at Bonn, Heinrich sent his son to the more serious University of Berlin, where Karl remained for the next 4 years (Spartacus Educational). During this time at his new university, Marx abandoned his Romantic views for Hegelianism, which ruled in Berlin at the time (Kreis 2008). These Hegelianistic views did not sprout from Marx by his own accord, but rather from the influence of one of his lecturers at Berlin, Bruno Bauer, who was both an athiest and political radical. Bauer was the one who had shown the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, a former professor of philosophy at Berlin, to Marx. For Marx, One of Hegel's most intriguing theories was that a thing, whether it be a role of society or a personal view, could not separated from its opposite. The only way for unity was to equalize the opposites by the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (Spartacus Educational).
After the death of his father in 1838, Marx now faced the challenge of making his own livelihood. He longed for a teaching position as a university professor at Bonn. After completing his PhD thesis on philosophy, specifically, comparing the views of Epicurus and Democritis, and his doctorate at the University of Jena, Marx hoped Bauer would help him find a position at Bonn (Wolff 2010). However, in 1842 Bauer was dismissed due to his radical views and was unable to help Marx, who was also facing his own hardships being involved with the young group of radical Hegelians. Luckily, Marx found a break in the field of journalism. After moving to the well-known liberal area of the Cologne Circle, Marx wrote an article for their newspaper the Rheinische Zeitung, or The Rhenish Gazette. The group was so impressed by Marx's article that they appointed him chief editor in October of 1842. During his time in Cologne, Marx befriended a man by the name of Moses Hess, who proclaimed himself to be a socialist. Marx became fascinated by Hess's views and attended many socialist meetings (Spartacus Educational). These new views on society inspired Marx to write many articles for his newspaper on economic questions. However, when the Prussian government read The Rhenish Gazette and the articles which seemed to threaten loyalty to capital government, the newspaper was shut down (Kreis 2008).
Sensing that his outspoken attitude in Germany would get him into deeper trouble, Marx quickly married Jenny von Westphalen and emigrated to France (Kreis 2008). Here, Marx was offered the position of editor for a new political journal called the Franco-German Annals. Accompanying him to the Annals was Bauer, Michael Bakunin, and Friedrich Engels, who would become very close with Marx over the course of their lives and assist him in writing works such as The Holy Family and the popular Communist Manifesto (Spartacus Educational).
In Paris, Marx began mixing with the working class for the first time. He admired the camaraderie of the workers and believed that they would eventually free society of the capitalist government through revolt. Soon Marx developed a humanist branch of communism. In 1844, he wrote the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, through which he developed his ideas on the concept of alienation. In the capitalist society, Marx identified three types of alienation:1. The worker is alienated from his production.2. The worker is alienated from himself; only when he is not working is he truly himself.3. People are alienated from each because of competition in the capitalist society.When Marx published articles proclaiming his communist views, the authorities quickly shut him down yet again (Spartacus Educational).Shortly after in 1844, Marx was again forced to move, this time to Brussels. This is where he developed a manuscript for the German Ideology, in which he predicted a collapse of industrial capitalism and the rise of communism, along with The Poverty of Philosophy. Marx also joined the Communist League in the center of London, inspiring him to publish his Communist Manifesto with Engels in 1848 (Kreis 2008).Marx moved back to Paris early in 1848 and founded the New Rhenish Gazette. A revolution was breaking out across Germany and Marx had hoped for the same reaction in Paris. However, Marx's writings were suppressed and he was forced to seek refuge in May of 1949 in London, a place to which he would remain for the rest of his life. Prussian authorities put much pressure on the British government to close their doors to Marx. However, Prime Minister John Russell's liberal views on freedom of speech and expression allowed Marx into England. During the first half of the 1850s, the Marx family lived in poverty, first in Chelsea from which they were evicted for failing to pay the rent, then in a three room flat in Soho, surviving only off of the money that Engels could raise. Of Karl and Jenny's six children, only three survived (Spartacus Educational).
During the 1860s, Marx continued publishing communist pamphlets and articles. His larger works were often put on hold due to his devotion to the First International, to which he was elected to council in 1864. He actively lead the struggle against the anarchist wing of Bakunin. However, in 1872, after the transfer from London to New York, led to the decline of the International. After the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, The Civil War in France (Kreis 2008). The last decade of Marx's life has been deemed by some as a "slow death." has been called “a slow death,” and it is true that the struggles which took place after the Commune dealt a serious blow to his health (Mehring 1918). The death of his eldest daughter and his wife did not improve his condition either. Marx's health slowly dwindled until his death on March 14, 1883 (Kreis 2008).
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts (1844), the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
~Eulogy by Friedrich Engels on March 17, 1883 (Kreis 2008)
List of Selected Works by Karl Marx:
- The Civil War in France (1871)
- Communist Manifesto (1848)
- A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
- Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
- Critique of Gotha Program (1875)
- The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841)
- Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
- The German Ideology (1846)
- Grundrisse (1858)
- The Holy Family (1844)
- Das Kapital (1867)
- On the Jewish Question (1843)
- The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)
- Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (1851)
- The Civil War in the United States (1861)
- Theses on Feuerbach (1845)
- Wage Labour and Capital (1847)
(Wolff 2010)Human Nature and Society
"The entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the begetting of man through human labor, nothing but the coming-to-be of nature for man."This passage is frequently quoted in Marx's works to describe the relationship between nature and and history, and nature and humans (Zhang 2006).
Unlike the common sense perspective of human nature, in which the nature in unchanging and unaffected by the condition or state of the human, Marx believed that human nature varied greatly in different environments. Though Marx disagreed with the typical views of human nature, this does not mean that he rejected the idea entirely. Marx was highly concerned with the question of human nature. He argued the only similar feature in all human societies was the need for labor and produce in order to survive. Human beings were like animals, given the fact that they must work on nature to survive. The difference, however, between humans and animals lies in the recognition of consciousness. Animals work from repetition. Whereas humans work from change. On the topic of discussion, one of Marx's famous quotations from his work Das Kapital reads as follows:
"A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement."
Marx believed that people can change their own nature by acting on the world around themselves. Through this dynamic relationship, where the laborer shapes the world he lives in, the laborer also shapes himself. Marx referred to this ability for conscious labor as the 'species-being.' The individual, being a social being, relies on its fellow earth inhabitants to get what it needs to survive. Through unity of labor all is possible. When society found that it was able to produce more than was necessary, member of society, in a way, freed themselves from labor, or human nature depending on perspective. And so the class society was born. Unfortunately, because of this freedom to some but not to all, alienation between the laborers and the well-off occurred, dividing the interests of one from the interests of the whole. However, this alienation does not exist in all human societies, and therefore human nature is different depending on the conditions (Cox 1998). Marx believed that capitalism distorted human nature and that the only way to free a society from the throws of capitalism was through socialist and communist revolutions. Marx deduced that capitalism estranged human beings from their own nature (Marx and Engels on Human Nature). According to Marx, capitalism is merely a stage in history that will eventually give way to the working class, which becomes less fortunate and larger in population. One the capitalist regime is deposed, the working class will create a society with wages, no money, and no social classes. Soon after that, all of human society will become one and there will be no state (Tucker 1978).
To fully understand Marx's views on human nature, it must also be understood that Marx saw labor as a desirable activity for humans. However, obstacles such as slavery, feudalism, and capitalism made labor seem repulsive to most. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx states that social relations are not born of human nature but by economic relations, which can be transformed through evolution. Marx spent his life seeking to understand how capitalism had evolved into the monster that he saw before him, and how men who seemed equal in his eyes could have control over one another (Marx and Engels on Human Nature).
Through history and economics, Marx believed that human nature is discoverable. Without science, any interpretation of human nature would be biased, which means the religion, philosophy, and other judgements from similar sources are all biased. To go on further, if science alone can discover human nature, then it is not a matter of religion or philosophy. Marx saw the road to reducing misery through the study of human nature, not religion by any means. Marx viewed religion as merely a sedative or drug that would temporarily relieve pain and suffering. Like drugs, religion would allow people to be careless and forgetful of their problems. Marx saw religion as the creation of humans, not the other way around. It all comes back to capitalism then. Capitalism can then use religion to oppress the working class and promote their own selfish desires. Capitalists can do this because religion provides reasoning for suffering (Tucker 1978).
Marxism Today
The problem with a Marxist government is that people are naturally selfish and defensive of what is theirs. Therefore Marxism can never be truly realized in the real world governments, when those who work hard do not want to relinquish their money to those who do little to nothing at all. So as result, those who have attempted to install a Marxist government, end up establishing a totalitarian government instead, where the citizens are violently forced into giving up produce, rather than giving it up willingly as Marx would have expected. This is how the world has ended up with governments such as the Republic of Cuba. In its attempts to establish a Marxist government, Cuba has gone in somewhat of a different direction than Marx would have hoped. The people of Cuba do not object to true socialism, but rather the government's authoritarian, violent extremist way of enforcing that brand of politics. In fact, many of the people of Cuba probably do not know the true socialism of Marx and Engels, which preaches democracy, humanity, liberty, and self-management (Campos 2011).
Catholicism vs. Marxism
Catholicism and Marxism are similar in the aspect that they both preach for the giving of oneself for the betterment of the whole. The difference of course is that the Catholic Church sees giving as fulfilling God's will to benefit all through his creations, whereas Marxism is a matter of fulfilling human nature to survive off of one another. The Catholic understanding is that there is a "social mortgage" that is entrusted to the people of the Church to care for product rather than to consume and use for themselves. It is a sign of respect to God.Marxism, in a seemingly complicated definition, is a more extreme Catholicism without religion. Its demands are to share wealth so that all are equal. Everyone is entitled to a fair share of product. In the Catholic perspective, every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency, such as food, shelter, clothing, employment, healthcare, and education. Each person must also uphold duties to their family and fellow citizens. The call to help the poor, similar to Marxism, is to show how the deprivation and powerlessness of the poor hurts the whole community.
As far as government goes, Marx wanted no formal government but rather for the working class to govern themselves. Catholicism requires that the state should have a positive moral function. It is meant to promote human dignity, protect human rights, and work for the good of the whole. Here is a somewhat socialist view from the Church as well, that the people may have the power of government so long as they govern themselves adequately. If they cannot, then the government shall have to intervene (Major Themes).
References:
Blanchard, William H. "Karl Marx and the Jewish Question." Political Psychology. 3rd ed. Vol. 5. International Society of Political Psychology, 1984. 365-74. Web.
Campos, Pedro. "Cuba: The True Counter-revolution." Havana Times.org » Open-minded Writing from Cuba. 8 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Sept. 2011.
<http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=48314>.
"Karl Marx : Biography." Spartacus Educational. Web. 13 Sept. 2011. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUmarx.htm>.
Kreis, Steven. "Karl Marx, 1818-1883." The History Guide -- Main. 30 Jan. 2008. Web. 05 Sept. 2011. <http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html>.
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"Marx and Engels on Human Nature." Revolutionary Socialist Culture of Peace. Strategy for Revolution in 21st Century. Web. 12 Sept. 2011. <http://sfr-21.org/human-nature.html>.
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Wolff, Jonathan. "Karl Marx (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 14 June 2010. Web. 05 Sept. 2011. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/>.
Zhang, Wenxi. "The Concept of Nature and Historicism in Marx." Frontiers of Philosophy in China//. 4th ed. Vol. 1. Springer, 2006. 630. Print.