Essay Preview: MarxReport this essayThe Marks Left by Marx: A Brief HistoryKarl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 , in the city of Trier in Rheinish Prussia. His family was Jewish, but converted to Protestanism in 1824. After graduating from High School in Trier, Marx entered university, first at Bonn and later in Berlin, where he studied law, majoring in history and philosophy. He graduated in 1841, submitting a doctoral thesis on the philosophy of Epicurus. At the time Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his views. In Berlin, he belonged to the circle of “Left Hegelians”, who sought to draw atheistic and revolutionary conclusions from Hegels philosophy.
In the beginning of 1842, some radical bourgeois in Rhineland, Cologne, who were in touch with the Left Hegelians, founded a paper in opposition to the Prussian government, called the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx and Bruno Bauer were invited to be the chief contributors, and in October 1842 Marx became editor-in-chief and moved from Bonn to Cologne. The newspapers revolutionary, democratic trend became more and more pronounced under Marxs editorship, and the government first imposed double and triple censorship on the paper, then, on January 1, 1843, suppressed it. Marx was forced to resign the editorship before that date, but his resignation did not save the paper, which suspended publication in March of 1843.
In Germany, the Communist Party had been banned for a year, and the ruling class was at its mercy, but it did intervene in the internal affairs of German states following the “Great Schism” — “a revolution in the relations between the rich and the poor, a revolution of the working class.” When, like in Egypt and other Western countries, the Communist Party was suppressed by the bourgeoisie, with disastrous results — including a “great victory for revolution” in Germany — the party’s position was reversed and the “left wing of the proletariat” began to fight for its rights and independence.
When Lenin saw the party’s “great victory” he had a hard time seeing how the party could do the same things it is doing in Europe. He wrote of the party as “an organization of revolutionary workers” who “is not without its share in its own failures.” As he put it in a statement to The New York Times (on August 9, 1844), “The party’s work is simply not as good for workers and revolutionary people, who have to live in what will be perceived by a majority of citizens as a hostile nation.” Therefore the party is not an organization for the benefit of the people, but to serve only to “oppose the dictatorship.”[1]
Karl Marx believed that the communist party was to use “the revolution to strengthen the bourgeoisie in the interests of ruling over others” (Capital v. Theses on the Constitution), but did not expect it to be successful. He concluded, “There is no doubt here that we have no longer any hope in such an endeavor.” The party saw “how a very useful force in fighting against the rule of the bourgeoisie” was being developed. The left was more interested in destroying the bourgeois state than in preserving the bourgeois state.
In 1919, after the fall of Stalingrad, the Party came to power under the leadership of the “left bourgeoisie.” Marx, who was a member of the Left Party of Spain, spoke in the October International in Barcelona of the party’s aims. By 1922, the Party was founded: it became the government of the Spanish People’s Republic with the full support of the Spanish people. The ruling class, “in the most radical respects,” was “united in the most idealized aspects of life and social affairs: and in this united movement for the restoration of the national existence through the whole of the working class,” Marx wrote. He pointed out in his writings that the “crème du monde socialiste” was “a bourgeois dictatorship of the proletariat,” and stressed that the dictatorship of the working class was “a political condition that is fundamentally connected to the social and economic conditions.”[2]
The following year, when all the other political parties failed, the Communists won victory
In Germany, the Communist Party had been banned for a year, and the ruling class was at its mercy, but it did intervene in the internal affairs of German states following the “Great Schism” — “a revolution in the relations between the rich and the poor, a revolution of the working class.” When, like in Egypt and other Western countries, the Communist Party was suppressed by the bourgeoisie, with disastrous results — including a “great victory for revolution” in Germany — the party’s position was reversed and the “left wing of the proletariat” began to fight for its rights and independence.
When Lenin saw the party’s “great victory” he had a hard time seeing how the party could do the same things it is doing in Europe. He wrote of the party as “an organization of revolutionary workers” who “is not without its share in its own failures.” As he put it in a statement to The New York Times (on August 9, 1844), “The party’s work is simply not as good for workers and revolutionary people, who have to live in what will be perceived by a majority of citizens as a hostile nation.” Therefore the party is not an organization for the benefit of the people, but to serve only to “oppose the dictatorship.”[1]
Karl Marx believed that the communist party was to use “the revolution to strengthen the bourgeoisie in the interests of ruling over others” (Capital v. Theses on the Constitution), but did not expect it to be successful. He concluded, “There is no doubt here that we have no longer any hope in such an endeavor.” The party saw “how a very useful force in fighting against the rule of the bourgeoisie” was being developed. The left was more interested in destroying the bourgeois state than in preserving the bourgeois state.
In 1919, after the fall of Stalingrad, the Party came to power under the leadership of the “left bourgeoisie.” Marx, who was a member of the Left Party of Spain, spoke in the October International in Barcelona of the party’s aims. By 1922, the Party was founded: it became the government of the Spanish People’s Republic with the full support of the Spanish people. The ruling class, “in the most radical respects,” was “united in the most idealized aspects of life and social affairs: and in this united movement for the restoration of the national existence through the whole of the working class,” Marx wrote. He pointed out in his writings that the “crème du monde socialiste” was “a bourgeois dictatorship of the proletariat,” and stressed that the dictatorship of the working class was “a political condition that is fundamentally connected to the social and economic conditions.”[2]
The following year, when all the other political parties failed, the Communists won victory
In 1843, Marx married, at Kreuznach, a childhood friend he had become engaged to while he was still a student. His wife came from a bourgeois family of the Prussian nobility, her elder brother being Prussias Minister of the Interior during 1850 to 1858, an extremely reactionary period
During Autumn of 1843, Marx went to Paris in order to publish a radical journal abroad, together with Arnold Ruge. Only one issue of this journal, Deutsch-FranzД¶sische JahrbДјcher, appeared. Publication was discontinued due to the difficulty of secretly distributing it in Germany, and to a disagreement with Ruge. Marxs articles in this journal showed that he was already a revolutionary who advocated “merciless criticism of everything existing”, and in particular the “criticism by weapon”, and appealed to the masses and to the lower class, the proletariat.
Frederick Engels traveled to Paris in September 1844, and from that time on became Marxs closest friend. Shortly after meeting, Marx and Engels worked together to produce the first mature work of Marxism Ж The German Ideology. In this work, largely produced in response to Feuerbachs materialism, Marx and Engels set down the foundations of Marxism with the materialistic conception of history, and broke from Left Hegelian idealism with a critique against Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;” Marx wrote in an outline for the beginning
of the book, ” the point is to change it.”Marx and Engels took an active part in the then seething life of the revolutionary groups in Paris. Marx ripped apart Proudhons Doctrine, which was of particular importance at the time, in Poverty of Philosophy. At the insistent request of the Prussian government, Marx was banished from Paris in 1845, considered by both governments a dangerous revolutionary. Marx then moved to Brussels.
In the spring of 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret propaganda society called the Communist League. Marx and Engels took a prominent part in the Leagues Second Congress, at whose request they drew up the Communist Manifesto, which appeared in February 1848. With outstanding clarity, the work outlined a new world conception based on materialism. This document analyzed the realm of social life; the theory of the class struggle; the tasks of the Communists; and the revolutionary role of the lower