Remembering Marx, Founder of the Real Communism

Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883)

“The actual process is not predetermined but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.”

Born on May 5, 1818, Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary.  He believed that if the working classes unite all around the world then exploitative working conditions would cease to exist.  He is known, along with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber to be an architect of the social sciences. 

Marx had three children who lived passed infancy. He also had an illegitimate child with his housekeeper, Helene Demuth.  He was a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. 

He did not do very well in school.  His father wanted him to study law, but he wanted to study philosophy and literature.  His major influences and favorite authors were Kant and Voltaire.  He liked to study and analyze the relationship between state, society and religion.

He died from Bronchitis on March 14, 1883.  “Workers of all lands unite” are the words that are written on his tombstone.  The point, however is to change the current status of this capitalistic state.  He was known to be the break between the modern and premodern societies.

After being exiled from Paris to Brussels, Belgium he wrote, The German Ideology, in May 1845 with his best friend Friedrich Engels, which stated, “the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production.”

In 1848 Marx and Engels were expelled from Belgium and after starting his newspaper called, New Rhenish Newspaper, which the government felt was inciting the armed rebellion.

He settled back down in London and stayed there until his death.  He sought refuge in London where he focused on revolutionary organizing, political economy and capitalism as well as economic data.

In the 1800s the most popular socialist was Karl Marx a German economist.  Marx believed that all history is a series of struggles between the ruling and working classes.  Marx basic socialist ideas were first expressed in the Communist Manifesto (1848), which he wrote with Engels, as well.  He said that: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”  From this quote, it is evident that Marx was an advocate for social change through knowledge of historical implications.  He argued that the structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to socialism.  Marx taught that capitalism would be replaced by socialism.  After World War I began in 1914 the socialist Movement collapsed.  Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, revolutionary Socialists founded new parties, which they called communist parties. 

The most meaningful thing I learned was his view on land.  He thought that land was the means of production.  Shouldn’t everyone own a part of land?  Who is to say that the land that we work and breath on is not ours?  I think that the problem with the housing market as well as the homeless population need to be looked at deeper and with Marxist thought in mind.  There are so may empty homes and apartments but there are still people living in unsanitary conditions on the street.