An Introduction to Karl Marx and Marxism

J. Marshall, 2011

BiographyBiography• Born 1818 in Trier • Jewish • Studied philosophy and

economics in Berlin• Married Jenny von Westphalen• Earned his living (badly) as a

journalist• Died 1883 in London having

only written three of the planned eight volumes of Das Kapital.

Karl Marx

i

Politics

• Marx was a communist.• He wrote The Communist

Manifesto with his friend, Friedrich Engels in 1848.

• He had three kinds of writing:– Journalism– Political polemic– Analysis of society and culture.

“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. … His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.”

MarxismMarxism

Marx’s role in history• When Marx died, he was not

well known (except by revolutionaries).

• After his death, a number of politicians led “Marxist” revolutions

• Many were totalitarian.• His philosophy underlies the

thinking of many political parties – (old Labour for example).

Conflict theory

• Societies are divided into two groups

• Our society is capitalist.

Owners(bourgeoisie)

Workers(proletariat)

Owners and workers• Owners exploit workers

and live off the money which the workers earn.

• Workers put up with this inequality because:

1. They are oppressed wage slaves and

cannot fight the system.

2. They are indoctrinated by ideology and religion into believing what they are told by the powerful.

A job for United Labour

“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range.”

Marx and The Revolution

• Marx predicted that wealth would belong to fewer and fewer people.

• The workers would eventually realise their position and overthrow the bourgeoisie

• There would be an armed revolution which would begin in Britain.

• It was coming SOON.

I don’t care about you!

• The revolution NEVER OCCURED (in the form he said it would).

• People are not poorer?• Wealth is not

concentrated in the hands of a few rich people (but it’s moving there).

• Britain hasn’t had a Communist revolution yet and is not likely to in the near future.

Marx in his own words # 1“Men make their own history, but

they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”

“History repeats itself, first as TRAGEDY, second as FARCE.”

# 2

Marx in his own words

# 3“The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.”

MAY SPEAK FOR HISTORICAL MOVEMENTS

CREATION OF HISTORICAL

MOVEMENTS NOT PERMITTED

“In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.”

I wish I didn’t need THEIR money to survive.

The S

weet L

ife of Peter the P

roletarian

The End