Karl Marx

Proletariat - taken from a Latin term for the "Lowest" working class of Rome, by way of the French version of it.

The Age of Enlightenment refers to a period of time in Western culture and philosophy where reason was advocated as the best and surest way to obtain the truth. The Enlightenment centers around many philosophers, statesman, and scientist of the eighteenth century and Karl Marx was not one of those philosophers as he is decidedly a nineteenth century philosopher and while it appears that he is influenced by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and most importantly Adam Smith and Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel, and with the exception of Hegel, all the other aforementioned philosophers are linked to the Age of Enlightenment.

The primary ideas produced and promulgated by those of the Enlightened age were those of freedom and natural rights and common law. These ideas and principles were a radical departure from past and present ideas of government that included theocracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and the Divine Right doctrine. The idea, that all men were free to defend themselves, their families and their property finally found its audience because of the philosophers linked to the Age of Enlightenment. It was by reason that Rene Descartes asserted that "I think, therefore I am" and it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who boldly claimed that there is genius in boldness and that whatever we can imagine we can achieve. It was Thomas Jefferson who declared that all people had the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness and Benjamin Franklin who warned that those willing to sacrifice liberty for security are worthy of neither. These are the thoughts that come from from the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment.

Karl Marx has little in common with these philosophers and even though he was quite clearly influenced by Adam Smith who wrote the Wealth of Nations and is considered the "father of Capitalism", Marx quite clearly rejects Smiths claim that people left alone to govern themselves is the best action for the market place and economies. Marx is no believer in every ones right to own property, and ownership of property is an idea found with in the works of those thinkers linked to the Enlightened Age. The idea that Marx was somehow linked to the Age of Enlightenment is a fallacy and probably has the popularity it does today because so many people consider Marx an intellectual and it is fair to assume that the philosophers of the Age of Reason were intellectuals as well and this might be something that Marx would have in common with the philosophers of the Enlightened Age if Marx were indeed an intellectual.

An intellectual is one who uses their intellect to obtain truth. Developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience. Marx's doctrine of communism is not guided by intellect but rather by emotion and experience. The Communist Manifesto offers little in the way of facts or supposition and relies heavily upon emotion. "Workers of the World Unite!" Das Kapital is a bloated tribute to illogic and irrationality. Marx is no economist and understands little about the value of production and those who produce and when Marx offers advice on how to turn a capitalist society into a communist society he suggests it cant be done unless the currency is undermined first because you just can't beat a one on one situation. What is meant by one on one situation is freedom. They are free to buy his product or not, he is free to sell them that product or not, that is a one on one situation. Marx, quite correctly admits that that situation, which is pure unfettered capitalism is better than what he offers and the only way that the workers of the world can obtain what Marx offers is by first rigging the system so that it appears as if capitalism doesn't work, so the workers must undermine the currency, make money useless, watch inflation rise, what stagflation, watch recessions and high unemployment, by God when will the workers of the world finally unite?

Marx offers the world a stateless society by way of a gargantuan state created to implement his ideas and then some how obediently go away. It's hard to see enlightenment in a man who actually believes you can create an oppressive state that will gladly go away once everyone has been granted the form of equality Marx offers. Its hard to see the enlightenment in the idea that people must be oppressed before they can be truly free. What Marx offers is a from of "legal plunder". Plunder is plunder no matter what the cause, the means do not justify the end, and if big wig capitalists plunder they are plunderers and if governments engage in wealth redistribution then they too are plunderers. If Marx was a fan of freedom at all it is freedom by way of subjection which isn't freedom at all. It is sad that while Adam Smith is dismissed as naive for his assertion that an "unseen hand" will guide the market place while this man Karl Marx is linked to the Age of Enlightenment brought to us by thinkers such as Smith and others. Few people today know nothing or little at all about Adam Smith and the same is actually true about Karl Marx. In the end, Marx is more famous than Adam Smith but the mantle of intellectualism granted Marx is undeserved and has done great damage to intellectualism across the world.

According to Karl Marx, the source of all value was the labor that is expended in the production of goods and services. He believed that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce it. This concept is known as the labor theory of value.

They dont have much in common other than that they are materialist. To Marx, society should work towards the poor catching up with the privileged; to Spencer, the privileged should distance themselves from the poor.

Marx developed the concept of a communist economic system where the means of production are owned collectively by the workers rather than by private individuals or corporations. In this system, there would be no private property and goods and services would be distributed based on need rather than profit.

Leon Trotsky was accused of various crimes by the Soviet government, including plotting against the state, counter-revolutionary activities, and attempting to undermine the leadership of Joseph Stalin. He was ultimately exiled and later assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Communism would create a society with no social classes.

Most people committed suicide which caused Cuba's population to go down. A lot of them were woman which also made the reproduction levels decrease. Men were desperate for sexual intercourse so they went to other countries as prostitute's and sexually transmitted diseases eg. herpes, aids, crabs etc. became more common.

"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole

surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections

everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a

cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country."

Karl Marx - The Communist Manifesto 1848

According to Karl Marx under true communism the means of production will be not so much owned by the people as simply administered by them without the vestiges of private ownership of property. The state will not own property under communism, because the state, as well as class differences, will wither and die. The state will not be overthrown; it will vanish. The state will own the means of production during the socialist phase of history leading up to true communism.

Karl Marx believed in the idea of communism, where the working class would rise up against the capitalist system to create a classless society where resources are shared equally among all individuals. Marx also emphasized the importance of understanding the economic relations and class struggles in society.

Marx and Engels did not create capitalism. It already existed as an economic system that emerged out of the historical forces of class struggles. Nor did they 'create' Communism. That had already been in existence in a primitive form even before serfdom became the predominant economic system, except that it was in small isolated instances, such as tribal groups.

The title of the 1848 book by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is "The Communist Manifesto." It is a political pamphlet that discusses the principles of communism and the struggles between social classes.

Karl Marx's invention was the philosophy known as "dialectical materialism," with which he calculated that communism was the ultimate and inescapable final form of society. Some would skip dialectical materialism and jump right ahead to having Marx invent communism. Marx didn't really invent communism since even he said it had existed in ancient times when societies were tribal like.

Marx is mainly associated with Russia/The Soviet Union, because his theories on capitalism, socialism and communism were adopted by Vladimir Lenin and other revolutionaries to convince the people of Russia to overthrow the Czarist regime then in power in 1917. When the revolution succeeded a "communist" regime was imposed. This communist regime was not the type of communism predicted by Marx.

Secondarily, one may also say he is associated with Germany, since he was a German national and with England, since he did most of his writing in London, England.

Karl Marx did not have a direct role in World War 1 as he died in 1883. However, his ideas on capitalism, class struggle, and imperialism influenced leftist movements that opposed the war. His theories continued to shape socialist and communist political thought during and after the conflict.

Marx wrote a lot, but the main ones he wrote by himself (though Engels was basically his editor and helped him out a bit as Marx did with him) were Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Civil War in France, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. His published manuscripts that are also of great importance are the Grundrisse, Theories of Surplus Value and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Karl Marx linked overpopulation with the theory of capitalism, arguing that population growth results from the need for labor in capitalist economies. He believed that population growth was connected to exploitation and inequality within capitalist systems.

A theoretical assumption is an underlying belief or proposition that forms the basis of a theoretical framework or model. It guides the development of hypotheses and predictions, serving as a foundation for constructing explanations and understanding phenomena within a particular field of study. These assumptions may not always be directly observable but are essential for shaping research and advancing knowledge.

Karl Marx felt that people should not be paid (in money) but rather in foodstuffs and industrial materials that they could fashion into crude tools and clothing.
PhD student in Political Science

a loss of one's identity and sense of meaning.

Karl Marx considered himself a historian, economist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best known for his theories on capitalism, class struggle, and the concept of communism as a means to overcome social inequalities.

Marx believed that the mode of production drives history but that other non-economic forces and institutions might have minor influences on the force created by the mode of production but no serious influence on history. In other words, the economic force drives history and everything else simply slows down or speeds up the economic force.

The historical context of a speech refers to the societal events, political climate, and cultural influences that were prominent at the time the speech was delivered. Understanding the historical context can provide important insights into the motivation behind the speech, the intended audience, and the impact it had on the audience and society as a whole. It helps to place the speech in its proper historical perspective and understand why certain themes or arguments were emphasized.

Karl Marx believed that the workers, or the proletariat, should completely control production in order to establish a classless society and eliminate exploitation by the capitalist class. He envisioned a system where workers collectively owned and managed the means of production.