Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Marx was born in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, into a middle-class family in Prussia (a former German kingdom straddling parts of present-day Germany and Poland). He led a tumultuous life: he was jailed for public drunkenness as a college student; his home and personal appearance were unkempt; and he spent income frivolously, causing his family to frequently live on the brink of poverty. For most of his professional life, Marx was a writer for a variety of liberal, radical, and foreign newspapers, moving between Prussia, France, Belgium, and England because he was continually blacklisted or deported for his radical views.

Marx’s attitude toward capitalism was scathing. In an age when “the Industrial Revolution had changed the process of production into a factory system and created a new ruling class of factory owners” (Bussing-Burks, p. 85), Marx perceived injustice, inequality, and the inevitability of change. Marx and his frequent coauthor, Friedrich Engels were outraged at the hardships faced by the working classes of industrial European cities, and they channeled this anger into two monumental written works that formed the basis of modern communism: The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, and a four-volume, 2,500-page opus, Das Kapital, published in 1867.

Marx’s analysis sees the “history of all...societies [as] the history of class struggle.” Marx interpreted human history as a series of eras, each defined by systems for producing goods, which created classes of rulers and the ruled. This process had already progressed from slavery to feudalism to capitalism and, in Marx’s view, would eventually lead to a classless society called communism.

Why did Marx object to capitalism? He believed that “capitalists” (the owners of the machines, property, and infrastructure used to produce things) were a separate class from the workers, or “proletariat,” who own nothing but the right to sell their labor in exchange for wages. Marx theorized that capitalists, in competition with each other for profits, would squeeze as much work as possible out of the proletariat at the lowest possible price. Furthermore, competition would cause some capitalists’ firms to fail, increasing unemployment (and thus misery and poverty) among the proletariat. Innovations in technology were not necessarily positive; new machines would add to unemployment (by rendering human labor increasingly inefficient and obsolete) while also making work dull, repetitive, and alienating.

Yet Marx was not altogether dismissive of capitalism, which he saw as a necessary stage for building a society’s standard of living. But in his view, the proletariat’s discontent would inevitably lead it to overthrow the ruling classes and create a more equitable society, at first socialist (wherein the state would control the economy and distribute resources more evenly) and then purely communist (a stateless, classless, egalitarian society without private property or nationality).

Marx’s beliefs, theories, and predictions represent a school of thought called Marxism. International political economy professors David Balaam and Michael Veseth caution, however, that there is no definitive reading of Marx, and that “Marxism is at once a theory of economics, politics, sociology, and ethics. For some, it is also a call to action” (Balaam & Veseth, p. 73). As a call to action, Marxism was most influential in the 20th century, when it inspired various brands of revolutionary activity, including the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the rise of communist governments in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, as well as in many Eastern European and African nations. It has since fizzled out, with the U.S.S.R. collapsing in the early 1990s, China shifting toward a market-friendly economy, and smaller communist countries that depended on them adopting more market-oriented systems.

As a theory, Marxism is arguably more durable. While some believe that communism’s decline disproves Marx, others draw upon his approach to critique economic phenomena on social grounds. Even as capitalism defines most of the world’s economies, Marxism remains alive in “the idea that capitalism can undergo serious scrutiny and adaptation” (Bussing-Burks, p. 95). In other words, Marx’s skepticism about capitalism initiated an ongoing conversation about its shortcomings and how it can be improved.

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• Was born during the Industrial Revolution

• The expansion of the Industrial Revolution in Europe caused many political, economic, and social issues

• Marx exposed some of the horrors of industrialization and blamed the system of capitalism (laissez-faire) for those problems

• Marx and Engels write "The Communist Manifesto (1848)" which heavily criticized the system of capitalism , and to replace it with a system he called communism

• Communism would allow workers, which they called, the Proletariat, to rule over the Bourgeoisie (factory owners, upper middle class & aristocracy)

• Communism would create equality and abolish the social classes (classless society)
• The Communist Manifesto was a reaction to the problems of industrialization (child labor, long working hours, overcrowded housing/cities, pollution, disease, etc)
• Government reaction to problems was slow
• Religion was the "opiate" of the masses