Karl Marx
Karl Marx | |
|---|---|
.png) Portrait of Karl Marx. | |
| Born |
Karl Heinrich Marx 5 May 1818 Trier, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation |
| Died |
14 March 1883 London, United Kingdom |
| Nationality |
Prussian Stateless (after 1845) |
| Known for | Founder of Marxism |
| Field of study | Philosophy, science, political economy, history |
Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, journalist and communist revolutionary who, with the assistance of his friend Friedrich Engels, enumerated upon the societal trends and laws, refined a materialist conception of history, and developed the framework known as Marxism. He is considered the founder and first foundational theorist of Marxism.
Biography
Early life
Karl Heinreich Marx was born in Trier, Rhenish Prussia (present-day Germany), on May 5, 1818, the son of Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, and Henriette Presburg Marx, a semi-illiterate Dutchwoman, as one of 8 children (Henriette Marx, Eduard Marx, Mauritz David Marx, Hermann Marx, Emilie Conradi, Caroline Marx, and Louise Juta). He became the oldest son when his brother Mauritz died in 1819.
Both Heinrich and Henriette were descendants of a long line of rabbis. The Prussian authorities barred him from the practice of law because he was Jewish following an anti-Semitic law passed in 1815. Heinrich Marx converted to Lutheranism in about 1817. Yet he was largely irreligious and also a passionate liberal activist, being an admirer of the works of Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. However, he was still fiercely patriotic and monarchistic, and educated his family as liberal Lutherans rather than atheists. Karl was baptized in the same church in 1824 at the age of six.[1]
Education and early intellectual development
Marx as a schoolboy absorbed the ideas of the French and German enlightenment thinkers. In the fall of 1835 he entered the University of Bonn and in October 1836 he enrolled in the University of Berlin, where he studied law, history, philosophy, and art theory. In 1837 he became an adherent of Hegel’s philosophy, primarily his dialectics, and established close ties with the Young Hegelians, who drew radical atheistic and political conclusions from Hegel’s teachings.
In April 1841, Marx was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy for his dissertation The Difference Between the Natural Philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. In this work Marx, although still aligned with idealism and Hegelianism, already developed a certain independence of Hegel in his recognition of the classical materialist philosophers, his firm atheism, and his avowal that philosophy must take an active part in life. Feuerbach’s writings greatly influenced him, contributing to his subsequent acceptance of the materialist position. However, Marx soon became aware of certain weaknesses in Feuerbach’s system, particularly its contemplative attitude and its underestimation of the importance of political struggle.[2]
Early agitation
Marx regarded active political and journalistic work as the means for realizing the ideals of progressive philosophy. In his article Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions, which he wrote in February 1842, Marx sharply criticized not only police measures against the opposition press but the entire Prussian system of government. Even more radical were his articles in the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhinelander Times), a newspaper published in Cologne by Prussian bourgeois opposition circles. His first contribution to the newspaper appeared in May 1842, and on October 15 he became one of its editors. His organizational talent, energy, and literary gifts made the newspaper a mouth-piece for revolutionary-democratic ideas, heralding the struggle against the autocracy of social estates and political and ideological reaction. In the articles Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Landtag and Vindication of the Moselle Correspondent, Marx defended the interests of the politically and socially downtrodden masses. In Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung he called attention to the link between the proletariat’s struggle in Great Britain and France and the spread of communist ideas.[2]
Socialist agitation
A desire to understand better the condition of the toiling masses prompted Marx to study material relations. He criticized liberal indecisiveness and also condemned the pseudo-revolutionary phrasemongering of the anarchistic group of Young Hegelians who called themselves The Free Ones. The revolutionary line of the Rheinische Zeitung brought upon the paper stricter censorship, and eventually the government decreed that it cease publication on Apr. 1, 1843. On March 17, Marx resigned as editor.[2]
Initial developments of Marxism
In October 1843, Marx moved to Paris, intending to publish a sociopolitical journal. His experience was enriched by direct contact with the revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat and with workers’ organizations and democratic and socialist circles, including Russian emigre groups. An analysis of the socialist and communist Utopian doctrines of various figures, and, later, Robert Owen enabled Marx to identify the rational "kernel" in these doctrines while rejecting everything that was utopian and fanciful. In February 1844 the first and only issue (a double number) of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (German-French calendar) appeared. In his articles On the Jewish Question and Toward a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx, using as yet imprecise terminology that reflected Feuerbach’s influence, sought to show that the communist transformation of society was the only way to overcome the limitations of the bourgeois revolution and to emancipate man from his social, national, and other fetters. A great milestone in socialism’s transition from a utopia to a science was Marx’ assertions that the proletariat is the social force capable of accomplishing such a tranformation and his belief that progressive theory is the proletariat’s intellectual weapon. The articles in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher marked the final stage of his turn from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. From this time he was a proletarian revolutionary, the ideologist of the working class, who appealed to the masses and to the proletariat.
In Paris, Marx undertook his first critical examination of the economic foundations of bourgeois society in the light of his materialist and communist views. Having become convinced as early as 1843 that “the anatomy of civil society must be sought in political economy,” Marx began to study economics. He also continued his historical research, particularly on the Great French Revolution. In his conception of the role of class struggle, Marx went far beyond the French historians who failed to see the economic roots of the origin of classes and the true nature of class antagonism under capitalism. Marx’ attitude toward the British classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo also took shape at this time. Although he had a great respect for their doctrine, Marx showed its inherent limitation — its metaphysical assumption that historically transitory bourgeois relations are eternal.
The Prussian authorities repeatedly tried to institute legal proceedings against Marx. In May 1849, at the height of the revolutionary struggle in the Prussian Rhineland and southwest Germany, the Prussian government was able to suppress Marx’ newspaper. After vainly attempting to persuade the leaders of the south German movement to act more decisively, Marx left for Paris in early June to establish contact with the French democrats. On August 24, 1849, he was obliged to leave France for Great Britain.[2]
Later life
Exile and internationalist efforts
Life in exile brought Marx much suffering. Of his seven children, only three daughters survived, Jenny, Laura, and Eleanor. The self-sacrificing assistance of Engels, obliged to work in the office of a Manchester textile firm, often saved Marx’ family from dire need. During these years Marx maintained a steady correspondence with his friend, exchanging ideas on theoretical questions, politics, and the working class movement.
Although he concentrated on elaborating his economic theory, Marx also continued to investigate other fields. He contributed to the remaining organs of the proletarian press — the Chartist People’s Paper and the German-American newspaper Reform — and to progressive bourgeois newspapers. From August 1851 to March 1862, he was a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. Marx used the bourgeois press to denounce the evils of capitalist society, exposing the British bourgeois-aristocratic oligarchy, French Bonapartism, the noble-monarchical regimes of Prussia and Austria, and tsarist autocracy in Russia. He commented on all revolutionary events — the strike movement in Great Britain, demonstrations against the Second Empire in France, the Spanish revolution of 1854-56, the Indian national uprising of 1857-59, and the Taiping peasant war in China. In his articles on India, Ireland, Iran, and China he showed the link between the struggle against colonial enslavement and the liberation movement of the working class. He considered it especially important to expose the foreign policy of the ruling classes. In such pamphlets as Lord Palmerston and Secret Diplomatic History of the 18th Century, Marx exposed the perfidious diplomatic techniques and devices of the governments of the exploiting classes and showed the continuity between the diplomatic traditions of absolutism and those of bourgeois regimes.
Marx continued his struggle for the creation of a proletarian party, seeking to preserve and educate the cadres that had emerged from the Communist League and to maintain the league’s revolutionary heritage. In Britain. he assisted efforts to revive the Chartist movement on a socialist basis. He aided American revolutionaries to disseminate communist ideas in the United States, and he maintained contact with socialist groups in Germany and other countries.
Marx played the leading role in the creation of the International Workingmen’s Association, later known as the First International, participating in its founding conference (September 28, 1864) and becoming the de facto head of its directing body, later called the General Council. Marx succeeded in making the International a genuinely working-class organization, thwarting the attempts of petit bourgeois democrats, including the followers of Giuseppe Mazzini, to deprive it of its proletarian class character.[2]
Death
Marx's efforts in the final years of his life were directed toward developing and perfecting revolutionary theory, forming proletarian parties in various countries, and strengthening the internationalist ties among them. In his work on the second and third volumes of Das Kapital (Capital) he studied the latest economic writings, particularly those on the economic and social development of the United States and Russia. He criticized the vulgar doctrines of his day—Katheder-Socialism in his Comments on A. Wagner’s Book A Textbook of Political Economy, Bakunin’s Utopian views in a summary of the book State and Anarchy; and the views of Eugen Dühring in a chapter for Engels’ Anti-Dühring. He devoted considerable attention to the natural sciences, including chemistry, agricultural chemistry, geology, and biology, and his “Mathematics Manuscripts” contained independent investigations in differential calculus.
From the beginning of the 1880’s Marx's health worsened. He was dealt a severe blow by the death of his wife in December 1881, and in January 1883 his eldest daughter, Jenny, died. In January 1883 he fell ill with bronchitis, resulting in serious complications. He died on March 14, 1883, and his death evoked worldwide response. At his funeral in the Highgate Cemetery in London on March 17, 1883, Engels declared prophetically that “his name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.”
Marx’s ideas became ever more firmly established in the working class movement. His development of Marxism have proved world-historic in the course of class struggle and socialist revolution, and he is regarded as a hero and leading intellectual figure in the working class movement to the present day.[2]
See also
Bibliography
The following are works by Karl Marx which are available in our library.