Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German political philosopher who founded the school of Marxism, known also as communism. Marx said the workers will overthrow the capitalists, the moneymen. They will set up a society with no private property, no rich and poor. Even government itself will wither away in time.
Many saw this as the wave of the future and so it was:
in the 1900s many countries ordered their societies according to Marx’s ideas, in whole or in part:
- In backward countries, the communists overthrew the government and remade society according to Marx’s ideas. There was no more private property – the government owned all the land, all the mines, all the businesses, all the houses, everything. There was no more freedom of religion, no more free political thought. Those who disagreed with the government and would not shut up were taken away. Examples: Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia.
- In democracies, socialists formed parties to represent workers. When they got in power they used the government’s power to tax to take from the rich and give to the poor. They gave money to those too old to work, made businesses pay workers fairly, gave workers the right to strike, provided money for higher education, and so on. Examples: Britain, Sweden, Chile under Allende, Israel.
In 1991 communism fell in Eastern Europe. It no longer seemed like the wave of the future, but a bad period in history. Yet even today Marx’s ideas live on in left-wing political thinking:
- The purpose of government is to bring justice through equality, doing away with rich and poor.
- To improve man you must improve society.
- Man can be understood by his material conditions alone: to understand man, follow the money.
When Mother Theresa was in India helping the poor, some laughed at her because she only helped one poor person at a time. They said she should work to change an unjust society instead. Mother Theresa thought like Jesus Christ, those who laughed at her thought like Karl Marx.
In the old days land was power, so the great landowners ruled society. Then came the rise of traders and bankers – the capitalists. Power moved from the land and farming to money and industry. The capitalists overthrew the old ruling class, the landowners.
Marx, who spent his days studying history in the British Museum, said this was going to happen again, only this time the workers will overthrow the capitalists.
The power of the capitalists came from profits made from putting money into businesses. But where did the profits come from? From underpaying workers. As soon as the workers understood this, they would overthrow the capitalists and take power for themselves.
Marx did not believe in God. He said religion was “the opium of the people.” – something to keep them from feeling the pain of living in an unjust society.
Marx was influenced by the philosophy of Hegel. Like Hegel he saw history in terms of opposites creating something new and better. Thus progress.
See also:
Abagond 
Karl marx was a jew, the most racist people on the face of the earth, hegel was also a jew and since the inception of communism have you seen what has happened to a once mighty country. It was the bolshevik revolution that led to events that took place in the Gulags, the systematic erradication of the middle and soldier class of Russia, 20-50 million estimated killed. I’m just a little confused are you praising Marx or denouncing him? By saying Marx is German(he may been born and raised there) is very misleading and perpetuates what many people still believe, that Jews are white which they most certainly are not, fair skinned but not white and if ask them they will tell the same.
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Are you saying the most racist people on the face of the earth are Jews? If i convert to Judaism, I may run the risk of becoming racist, hmmm… (there are white & black jews by the way, and everything in between. Abagond probably needs to set up a different topic regarding this, LOL)
Just when I find myself thinking, what other topics could Abagond write about, one pops up!!!
Many whites that helped in the Civil Rights movement were Jewish.
As for Marxism, interesting ideology but it has its flaws. Captilism tends to “work”.
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Just as an FYI, much of your commentary is incorrect.
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To begin with, Marxism and communism are not necessarily synonymous. Marx’ political writings and his historical/philosophical writings should be looked at separately.
Marx, for example, did not preach that the giovernment should own everything. He believed that in a classless society, government would melt away.
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Personally I think Bakunin may in fact be the ‘better’ of the two personages.
Bakunin wrote in his work “Anarchism and the State”:
They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship — their dictatorship, of course — can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.
At a quick glance this seems not like a bad overview of the diffeent and respective position of the two ‘giants’
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OOOps si daisy – ha ha
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm
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Yep. Of course Marx himself said “I am not a Marxist”.
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Bakunin nailed the problem. Replacing one state with another is futile. Government is a hierarchical structure. Where there is hierarchy there is privilege and power. Power corrupts – always. The inevitable end product of any revolution that installs a replacement government or state is simply a new corrupt elite lording it over the proles.
Bakunin and Kropotkin’s vision of an equal, Anarchist society is the fairest, most logical, most peaceful society one could imagine. It is also possibly the most difficult to achieve.
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Marx was naive to say the state would wither away in the proletariat dictatorship. I personally find anarcho-syndicalism and social democracy as better alternatives, but both are influenced by Marx.
A post on the Paris Commune would be appropriate here.
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It’s obvious that you guys don’t understand what dictatorship of the proletariat means. Too much stupid propaganda has led you astray, maybe if you read what the man actually wrote, you wouldn’t be so confused. Based on my reading of Marx, dictatorship of the proletariat meant that the workers would get to run things and not just show up every four years, to listen to a bunch of lies and vote for the best bs artist. Rome, when it was a republic, regularly elected dictators who left office after doing their job. If you’re going to claim that “Marx was naive to say the state would wither away in the proletariat dictatorship.” then you must condemn democracy as well because it is supposed to be based on the citizenry being the supreme ruler and government being their servants. Would the police have the power they do, if the citizenry decided to police themselves and do away with all the macho bullshit that’s part of police lore?
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I will admit, I have only read The Communist Manifesto and writings by folks like Rosa Luxemburg and anarchist critics. It just sounds a bit like wishful thinking to write that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ will somehow conclude in a democratic state with democratic socialism achieved. It’s certainly possible, but depends on so many other factors. We have numerous examples, such as the Russian Revolution, to show how things don’t always turn out that way.
The anarchist critiques of Marxism are useful for showing the problems in any state system…even though I am still reluctant to call myself an anarchist.
The Paris Commune deserves additional inquiry for a fascinating moment in world history that is relevant to this post.
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The problem is that communists use the term “democracy” completly different than liberals. For them democracy exists when the government works towards the goal of history according to historical materialism. The current opinion of a majority of voters is completly irrelevant to them. That’s why they can call the rule of a tiny group of people “democratic” even if this group explicitally acts against the will of the majority.
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You keep bringing up the Paris Commune, maybe you would find it useful to read what Marx wrote about it. Lenin’s State and Revolution should also be read. Democratic Socialism wasn’t the aim but communism. The Russian Revolution by Trotsky and the Revolution Betrayed by the same author documents what happened in Russia.
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“The problem is that communists use the term “democracy” completly different than liberals. For them democracy exists when the government works towards the goal of history according to historical materialism. The current opinion of a majority of voters is completly irrelevant to them.” Tell us where you get this stuff from by quoting Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky.
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I don’t know the marxist texts by heart, so I don’t know on what source material this interpretation is founded. But it was the accepted interpretation I learned at university. A marxist would obviously frame it differently.
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