
Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883 London, UK) was an influential Prussia philosopher, political economy, and revolutionary organizer of the International Workingmen's Association. While Marx addressed a wide range of issues, he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggle, summed up in the famous line from the introduction to the ''The Communist Manifesto'': "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle". == Biography == === Early life === Karl Marx was born into a progressive Jewish family in Prussian Trier (now in Germany). His father Herschel, descending from a long line of rabbis, was a lawyer and his brother Samuel was—like many of his ancestors—chief rabbi of Trier. In 1817 Heinrich Marx converted to the Prussian state religion of Lutheran church to keep his position as a lawyer, which he had gained under the Napoleonic regime. The Marx family was very liberalism and the Marx household hosted many visiting intellectuals and artists during Karl's early life. ==== Education ==== Marx received good marks in ''gymnasium (school),'' the Prussian secondary education school. His senior thesis, which anticipated his later development of a social analysis of religion, was a treatise entitled "Religion: The Glue That Binds Society Together", for which he won a prize. In 1833 Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn to study law, at his father's behest. He joined the Trier Tavern Club and at one point served as its president; his grades suffered as he spent most of his time singing songs in beer halls (McLellen 17). The next year, his father made him transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin (now known as the Humboldt University of Berlin). ==== Marx and Young Hegelians ==== In Berlin, Marx's interests turned to philosophy, much to his father's dismay, and he joined the circle of students and young professors known as the "Young Hegelians", led by Bruno Bauer. Some members of this circle drew an analogy between post-Aristotle philosophy and post-Hegelian philosophy. Another Young Hegelian, Max Stirner, applied Hegelian criticism and argued that stopping anywhere short of nihilism egoism was mysticism. His views were not accepted by most of his colleagues, and Karl Marx responded in parts of ''Die Deutsche Ideologie'' (The German Ideology), but decided not to publish it. Nevertheless Stirner's book was the main reason Marx abandoned the Feuerbachian view and developed the basic concept of historical materialism. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel died in 1831, and during his lifetime was an extremely influential figure at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and in German academia in general. The Hegelian establishment (known as the Right Hegelians) in place at Friedrich-Wilhelms maintained that the series of historical dialectics had been completed, and that Prussian society as it existed was the culmination of all social development to date, with an extensive civil service system, good universities, industrialization, and high employment. The Young Hegelians with whom Marx was associated believed that there were still further dialectical changes to come, and that the Prussian society of the time was far from perfect as it still contained pockets of poverty, government censorship was in place, and non-Lutherans suffered from religious discrimination. Marx was warned not to submit his doctoral dissertation at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, as it would certainly be poorly received there due to his reputation as a Young Hegelian radical. Marx instead submitted his dissertation, which compared the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus, to the University of Jena in 1840, where it was accepted. === Career === When his mentor Bruno Bauer was dismissed from the philosophy faculty in 1842, Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and went on to edit the ''Rheinische Zeitung,'' a radical Cologne newspaper. After the newspaper was shut in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government censors, Marx returned to philosophy, turned to political activism, and worked as a freelance journalism. Marx soon moved, however, something he would do often as a result of his radical views. Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship with Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote ''On the Jewish Question'', mostly a critique of current notions of civil rights and political emancipation. It was in Paris that he met and began working with his life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels, who called Marx's attention to the situation of the working class and guided Marx's interest in economics. After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved to Brussels, Belgium. There they co-wrote ''The German Ideology'', a critique of the philosophy of Hegel and the Young Hegelians. Marx next wrote ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847), a critique of French socialist thought. These works laid the foundation for Marx and Engels' most famous work, ''The Communist Manifesto'', first published on February 21, 1848, which was commissioned by the Communist League (formerly, the League of the Just), an organization of German émigrés whom Marx had met in London. That year Europe experienced revolutionary upheaval; a working-class movement seized power from King Louis Philippe in France and invited Marx to return to Paris. When this government collapsed in 1849, Marx moved back to Cologne and restarted the ''Rheinische Zeitung'', only to be swiftly expelled again. Marx's final move was to London. In 1852 Marx wrote his famous pamphlet ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'', in which he analyzed Napoleon III of France takeover of France. From 1852 to 1861, while in London, Marx contributed to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune as its European correspondent. === First International and Gladstone Quote === In 1863, Chancellor of the Exchequer William Ewart Gladstone gave a budget speech to Parliament in which he commented on the increase in the United Kingdom's national wealth, and added (according to the report of the speech in the ''Times''), "I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that it was confined to the class who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the laboring population. The augmentation I have described and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes possessed of property." But, in the semi-official version published in ''Hansard'', Gladstone deleted the final sentence (editing the ''Hansard'' version was a common practice among Members of Parliament). In 1864 Marx organized the International Workingmen's Association, later called the First International, as a base for continued political activism. In his inaugural address, he purported to quote Gladstone's speech, to the effect that, "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property." He repeated the citation in Volume 1 of ''Capital''. The discrepancy between Marx's quote and the ''Hansard'' version of the speech (which was well-known) was soon employed in an attempt to discredit the International. Marx attempted to rebut the accusations of dishonesty, but the allegation continued to resurface. Marx later gave as his source the newspaper ''The Morning Star''. Engels devoted a good deal of attention to the affair in the preface to the fourth edition of ''Capital'' — which, likewise, did not put the matter to rest. Engels claimed that it was not ''The Morning Star'' but the ''Times'' that Marx was following. Indeed, critics of Marxism such as the journalist Paul Johnson (journalist) continue to invoke Marx's supposed misquotation as evidence of general dishonesty. One can find a straightforward unravelling of this dispute in David A. Felix' work, ''Marx As Politician'' (London, 1983). The International survived the controversy, however, collapsing in 1872 in part because of the fall of the Paris Commune, and in part because many members turned to Mikhail Bakunin's anarchism. In London throughout this period, Marx also dedicated himself to the historical and theoretical research behind ''Das Kapital'' (''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy''). Marx published the first volume in 1867. The remaining two volumes of ''Capital'' were never completed by Marx, but were reconstructed by Engels from extensive notes and drafts, and published posthumously. Throughout the London period of Marx's life, his family was generally impoverished and depended on generous contributions from Engels to get by. Marx died in London in the year 1883, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. === Marital life === Marx's wife, Jenny von Westphalen, came from an aristocratic background. Her uncle was Lion Philips, father of the brothers Gerard and Anton who founded the famous Philips company in 1891. The Marxes had many children, several of whom died young — their daughter Eleanor Marx (1855-1898), born in London, was also a committed socialist and helped edit her father's works. Jenny Marx died in December 1881. == Influences on Marx's philosophy == Marx's thought was heavily influenced by both the dialectical historicism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist revolution is inevitable. However, Marx famously asserted that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to change the world. Consequently, most followers of Marx are not fatalists, but activists who believe that revolutionaries must organize social change. Marx's philosophy Historical materialism (which Engels controversially adapted as dialectical materialism) is certainly influenced by Hegel's claim that reality (and history) should be viewed dialectic, through a clash of opposing forces. Hegel believed that the direction of human history is characterized in the movement from the fragmentary toward the complete and the real (which was also a movement towards greater and greater rationality). Sometimes, Hegel explained, this progressive unfolding of the Absolute involves gradual, evolutionary accretion but at other times requires discontinuous, revolutionary leaps — episodal upheavals against existing status quo. While Marx accepted this broad conception of history, Hegel was an idealism, and Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialism terms. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that it was necessary to set it upon its feet. Marx's acceptance of this notion of ''materialist'' dialectics which rejected Hegel's idealism was greatly influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach. In ''The Essence of Christianity'', Feuerbach argued that God is really a creation of man and that the qualities people attribute to God are really qualities of humanity. Accordingly, Marx argued that it is the material world that is real and that our ideas of it are consequences, not causes, of the world. Thus, like Hegel and other philosophers, Marx distinguished between appearances and reality. But he did not believe that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary, he thought that historically and socially specific ideology prevented people from seeing the material conditions of their lives clearly. The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism was Engels' book, ''The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844'', which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution. == Marx's philosophy == The notion of labor is fundamental in Marx's thought. Basically, Marx argued that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation "labor" and the capacity to transform nature labor-power. For Marx, this is a natural capacity for a physical activity, but it is intimately tied to the human mind and human imagination: :A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. (''Capital'', Vol. I, Chap. 7, Pt. 1) Beyond his claim about the human capacity to transform nature, Marx makes no other claims about "human nature." Karl Marx inherits that Hegelian dialectic and, with it, a disdain for the notion of an underlying invariant human nature. Sometimes Marxists express their views by contrasting “nature” with “history”. Sometimes they use the phrase “existence precedes consciousness”. The point, in either case, is that who a person is, is determined by where and when he is — social context takes precedence over innate behavior; or, in other words, the main feature of human nature is adaptability. Marx did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that work is a social activity and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things, such as land, natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed from a feudalism mode of production to a capitalism mode of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or class (social)es. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources. For Marx, different classes have divergent interests, which is another source of social disruption and conflict. Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities. Commodity fetishism is an example of what Engels called false consciousness, which is closely related to the understanding of ideology. By ideology they meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which are presented as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels' point was not only that such beliefs are wrong; they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). Thus, while such ideas may be false, they also reveal in coded form some truth about political relations. For example, although the belief that the things people produce are actually more productive than the people who produced them is literally absurd, it does reflect the fact (according to Marx and Engels) that people under capitalism are alienated from their own labor-power. Another example of this sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the ''Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right:"'' :Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis argued that the primary social function of religion was to promote solidarity, here Marx sees the social function as a way of expressing and coping with social inequality, thereby maintaining the status quo. == Marx's critique of capitalism == Marx argued that this alienation of labor power (and resulting commodity fetishism) is precisely the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodity — when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to do so because they no longer possessed their own land or tools necessary to produce. People sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them to survive. Those who must sell their labor power to live are "proletarians." The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeois." (NOTE: Marx considered this an objective description of capitalism, distinct from any one of a variety of ideological claims of or about capitalism). The proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists. Marx distinguished capitalists from merchants. Merchants buy goods in one place and sell them in another; more precisely, they buy things in one market and sell them in another. Since the laws of supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants, then, practice arbitrage, and hope to capture the difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry the price for labor was lower than the price of the manufactured good. Marx called this difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus value was in fact the source of a capitalist's profit. The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly revolutionized the means of production. But Marx argued that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a certain point, the result would be a recession or depression in which certain sectors of the economy would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor would also fall, and eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the growth of new sectors of the economy. Marx believed that this business cycles of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily the enrichment and empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that were the proletariat to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises. In general, Marx thought that peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive, well-organized and violent revolution was required. Finally, he theorized that to maintain the socialist system, a dictatorship of the proletariat must be established and maintained. ==Marx's critique of bourgeois democracy and of anti-Semitism== A small number of scholars have presented an alternative reading of Marx, based on his essays ''On the Jewish Question''. Economist Tyler Cowen, historian Marvin Perry, and political scientist Joshua Muravchik have suggested that what they see as an intense hatred for the "Jewish Class" was part of Marx's belief that if he could convince his contemporaries and the public to hate Jewish capitalists, the public would eventually come to hate non-Jewish capitalists as well. Most scholars reject this claim for two reasons: first, it is based on two short essays written in the 1840s, and ignores the bulk of Marx's analysis of capitalism written in the following years. Second, it distorts the argument of ''On the Jewish Question'', in which Marx deconstructs liberal notions of emancipation. During the Enlightenment, philosophers and political theorists argued that religious authority had been oppressing human beings, and that religion must be separated from the functions of the state for people to be truly free. Following the French Revolution, many people were thus calling for the Jewish emancipation. At the same time, many argued that Christianity is a more enlightened and advanced religion than Judaism. For example, Marx's former mentor, Bruno Bauer, argued that Christians need to be emancipated only once (from Christianity), and Jews need to be emancipated twice — first from Judaism (presumably, by converting to Christianity), then from religion altogether. Marx rejects Bauer's argument as a form of Christian ethnocentrism, if not anti-Semitic. Marx proceeds to turn Bauer's language, and the rhetoric of anti-Semites, upside down to make a more progressive argument. First, he points out that Bruno Bauer's argument is too parochial because it considers Christianity to be more evolved than Judaism, and because it narrowly defines the problem that requires emancipation to be religion. Marx instead argues that the issue is not religion, but capitalism. Pointing out that anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews are fundamentally anti-capitalist, Marx provides a theory of anti-Semitism by suggesting that anti-Semites scapegoat Jews for capitalism because too many non-Jews benefit from, or are invested in capitalism, to attack capitalism directly. Marx also uses this rhetoric irony to develop his critique of bourgeois notions of emancipation. Marx points out that the bourgeois notion of freedom is predicated on choice (in politics, through elections; in the economy, through the market), but that this form of freedom is anti-social and alienating. Although Bauer and other liberals believe that emancipation means freedom to choose, Marx argues that this is at best a very narrow notion of freedom. Thus, what Bauer believes would be the emancipation of the Jews is for Marx actually alienation, not emancipation. After explaining that he is not referring to real Jews or to the Jewish religion, Marx appropriates this anti-Semitic rhetoric against itself (in a way that parallels his Hegelian argument that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction) by using "Judaism" ironically as a metaphor for capitalism. In this sense, Marx states, all Europeans are "Jewish". This is a pun on two levels. First, if the Jews must be emancipated, Marx is saying that all Europeans must be emancipated. Second, if by "Judaism" one really means "capitalism," then far from Jews needing to be emancipated from Christianity (as Bauer called for), Christians need to be emancipated from Judaism (meaning, bourgeois society). See: works by historian Hal Draper and David McLellan. See also: Roots_of_anti-Semitism#Karl_Marx.27s_.27On_the_Jewish_Question.27.. == Marx's influence == [[Image:Index.jpg|thumb|right|Marx helped prepare the [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/rules.htm provisional rules] for the First International.]] Marx and Engels' work covers a wide range of topics and presents a complex analysis of history and society in terms of class relations. Followers of Marx and Engels have drawn on this work to propose a political and economic philosophy dubbed Marxism. Nevertheless, there have been numerous debates among Marxists over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to current events and conditions (and it is important to distinguish between "Marxism" and "what Marx believed"; for example, shortly before he died in 1880, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde, and to Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue, accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggles; "if that is Marxism" — paraphrasing what Marx wrote — "then I am not a Marxist"). Essentially, people use the word "Marxist" to describe those who rely on Marx's conceptual language (e.g. mode of production, class, commodity fetishism) to understand capitalist and other societies, or to describe those who believe that a workers' revolution is the only means to a communist society. Six years after Marx's death, Engels and others founded the "Second International (politics)" as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1914, in part because some members turned to Edward Bernstein's "evolutionary" socialism, and in part because of divisions precipitated by World War I. World War I also led to the Russian Revolution and the consequent ascendance of Vladimir Lenin's leadership of the communist movement, embodied in the "Comintern". Lenin claimed to be both the philosophical and political heir to Marx, and developed a political program, called Leninism or Bolshevik, which called for revolution organized and led by a centrally organized Communist Party. After Lenin's death, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, seized control of the Party and state apparatus. He argued that before a world-wide communist revolution would be possible, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to dedicate itself to building communism in its own country. At this time, Leon Trotsky left the Soviet Union and in 1934 founded the competing "Fourth International." Some followers of Trotsky argued that Stalin had created a bureaucratic state rather than a socialist state. In China Mao Zedong also claimed to be an heir to Marx, but argued that peasants and not just workers could play a leading role in a Communist revolution. This was a profound departure from Marx's own view of revolution, which focused exclusively on the urban proletariat, and which he believed would take place in advanced industrial societies such as France, Germany and England. Marxism-Leninism as espoused by Mao came to be internationally known as Maoism. In the 1920s and '1930s, a group of dissident Marxists founded the Institute for Social Research in Germany, among them Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. As a group, these authors are often called the Frankfurt School. Their work is known as Critical theory (Frankfurt School), a type of Marxist philosophy and cultural criticism heavily influenced by Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, and Max Weber. The Frankfurt School broke with earlier Marxists, including Lenin and Bolshevism in several key ways. First, writing at the time of the ascendance of Stalinism and Fascism, they had grave doubts as to the traditional Marxist concept of proletarian class consciousness. Second, unlike earlier Marxists, especially Lenin, they rejected economic determinism. While highly influential, their work is often criticized for reducing Marxism to a purely academic enterprise. Other influential non-Bolshevik Marxists at that time include Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg. Henryk Grossmann, who elaborated the mathematical basis of Marx's 'law of capitalist breakdown', was another contemporary. These figures, including but not limited to the Frankfurt School, are often known by the term Western Marxism. In 1949 Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman founded ''Monthly Review'', a journal and press, to provide an outlet for Marxist thought in the United States independent of the Communist Party of the United States of America. == Contemporary criticism == Many proponents of capitalism have argued that capitalism is a more effective means of generating and redistributing wealth than socialism or communism, and that the gulf between rich and poor that concerned Marx and Engels was a temporary phenomenon. Some suggest that greed and the need to acquire capital is an inherent component of human behavior, and is not caused by the adoption of capitalism or any other specific economic system (although economic cultural anthropology have questioned this assertion,) and that different economic systems reflect different social responses to this fact. The Austrian School of economics has criticized Marx's use of the labor theory of value. In addition, the political repression and economic problems of several historical socialisms have done much to destroy Marx's reputation in the Western countries, particularly following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Marx has also been criticized from the Left. Evolutionary and democratic socialism reject his claim that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Others argue that class is not the most fundamental inequality in history and call attention to patriarchy or race. Some today question the theoretical and historical validity of "class" as an analytic construct or as a political actor. In this line, some question Marx's reliance on 19th century notions that linked science with the idea of "progress" (see social evolution). Many observe that capitalism has changed much since Marx's time, and that class differences and relationships are much more complex — citing as one example the fact that much corporate stock in the United States is owned by workers through pension funds. Still others criticize Marx from the perspective of philosophy of science. Karl Popper has criticized Marx's theories as he believed they were not falsifiable, which he argued would render some particular aspects of Marx’s historical and socio-political arguments unscientific. Primarily, this stems from Marx's assertion that class revolt will be part of the process in overcoming capitalism. The argument goes that the critic says "this will not happen" to which the reply is "but it will." However it has been argued that such statements show a simplistic understanding or a deliberate misinterpretation, because the reply has no basis in Marxist theory. A common critique of Marx points out that the increasing class antagonisms he predicted never actually developed in the Western world following industrialization. While socioeconomic gaps between the bourgeoisie and proleteriat remained, industrialization in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom also saw the rise of a middle class not inclined to violent revolution. While the economic devastation of the Great Depression broadened the appeal of Marxism in the developed world, future government safeguards and economic recovery led to a decline in its influence. In contrast, Marxism remained extremely influential in feudalism and economically backwards societies such as Czarist Russia, where the October Revolution was successful. [http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.10009,filter.all/pub_detail.asp] Openly Marxist political parties and movements have significantly declined since the fall of the Soviet Union. Critics argue that the Soviet Union's numerous internal failings and subsequent collapse were a direct result of the practical failings of Marxism, but modern-day Marxists, especially Trotskyism, tend claim that the Soviet Union's political system did not represent true communism. Marx analyzed the world of his day and refused to draw up plans of how a future socialist society should be run saying he did not "write recipes...for cook-shops of the future." Outside Europe and the United States, communism has generally been superseded by anti-colonialist and nationalism struggles which sometimes appeal to Marx for theoretical support. Contemporary supporters of Marx argue most generally that Marx was correct that human behavior reflects determinate historical and social conditions (and is therefore changing and can not be understood in terms of some universal "human nature"). More specifically, they argue his analysis of commodities is still useful and that alienation is still a problem. ==Miscellaneous== *The message carved on Marx's tombstone, in Highgate Cemetery, London - a monument built in 1954 by the British Communist Party - is: ''"Workers of all lands, unite"''. Before 1954, Marx's tomb was hard to find and humbly adorned. ==References== * Stepen Jay Gould, ''[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_7_108/ai_55698600/pg_1 A Darwinian Gentleman at Marx's Funeral - E. Ray Lankester]'', Page 1, [http://www.findarticles.com/ Find Articles.com] (1999). (Marx's tomb) * Daniel Little, ''The Scientific Marx'', University of Minnesota Press (1986), trade paperback, 244 pages, ISBN 0816615055 (Marx's work considered as science) * David McLellen ''Karl Marx: His Life and Thought'' * Francis Wheen, ''Karl Marx'', Fourth Estate (1999), ISBN 1857026373 (biography of Marx) == See also == *Friedrich Engels *Marxism *''Das Kapital'' *The Frankfurt School *History of socialism ==External links== ===Bibliography and Online Texts=== * [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ Internet archive of Marx & Engels works] ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ ''Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right] (1843)'' ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/ ''On the Jewish Question''] (1843) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/ ''Notes on James Mill''] (1844) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm ''Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844''] (1844) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm ''Theses on Feuerbach''] (1845) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ ''The German Ideology''] [with Engels] (1845-46) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ ''The Poverty of Philosophy''] (1846-47) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ ''Wage-Labour and Capital''] (1847) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ ''Manifesto of the Communist Party''] [with Engels] (1847-48) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte''] (1852) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ ''Grundrisse''] (1857-58) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''] (1859) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm ''Writings on the U.S. Civil War''] [with Engels; compiled] (1861) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ ''Theories of Surplus Value, 3 volumes''] (1862) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ ''Value, Price and Profit''] (1865) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm ''Capital vol. 1''] (1867) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ ''The Civil War in France''] (1871) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ ''Critique of the Gotha Programme''] (1875) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm ''Notes on Wagner''] (1883) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume36/ ''Capital, vol. 2''] [posthumously, by Engels] (1893) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ ''Capital, vol. 3''] [posthumously, by Engels] (1894) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/index.htm ''Letters''] [with Engels; compiled] (1833-95) ** ''Ethnological Notebooks'' — ISBN 9023209249 (1879-80) * [http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Marx,%20Karl Project Gutenberg: Karl Marx] * [http://www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/akmc.htm: Ehrbar´s Marx Annotations] [Contemporary Annotations to Marx´ Writings, from a critical realist perspective. Facilitates understanding of central points often omitted] ===Biographies=== * ''Vladimir Lenin's'' [http://welshcommunists.co.uk/karl.htm Karl Marx Biography] * ''Franz Mehring's'' [http://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1918/marx/ch01.htm Karl Marx: The Story of His Life] * ''Francis Wheen's'' [http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj85/morgan.htm The Man Behind the Mask] ===Portraits=== * [http://www.iisg.nl/collections/marx/index.html Portraits of Karl Marx] ===Encyclopedia entries=== * [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry] 1818 births 1883 deaths 19th Century philosophers Economists German philosophers Atheist philosophers Secular Jewish philosophers Marxist theorists Communists Revolutionaries bn:কার্ল মার্ক্স fa:کارل مارکس gd:Karl Marx jv:Karl Marx la:Carolus Marx ms:Karl Marx zh-min-nan:Karl Marx simple:Karl Marx th:คาร์ล มาร์กซ
==Archives== *Talk:Karl Marx/archive 1 *Talk:Karl Marx/Archive 2 *Talk:Karl Marx/Hegelian Infleunces ==Patriarchal Monotheism and the Hegelian Dialectic== :::Jesus was one figure within the older history of patriarchal monotheism. I think it is fair to say that such a view of the world is likely to give rise to forced conversions to the cause of the "one true God" and to such events as the Crusades, or to people who fly airplanes into skyscrapers. Likewise, if the one true God wears a Hegelian garb. --User:Christofurio 14:31, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::::First you over-generalize ("one figure within the older history of patriarchal monotheism"), then you kindly give me your baseless opinion ("I think it is fair to say that such a view of the world is likely to..."). The second statement needs no further refutation than the fact that it is ''not'' fair to say anything without a good reason. The first statement is equivalent to saying "Marx was one figure within the older history of philosophical materialism", or even "Marx was one figure within the older history of the human species". You could then say that human beings, being meat-eaters, are likely to be somewhat prone to kill, and that Marxism, being a political current with human beings as adherents, is likely to share that general human trend. This is an argument against humanity in general, not an argument against Marx or Marxism. See my point? -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::No, I don't see your point. I don't even concede that meat-eaters are more likely to start wars than vegetarians. Nor have I made any argument against humanity in general. Heck, I didn't even make any argument against Marxism (or Christianity, or monotheism). My point, which is impeccably NPOV, concerns non-accidental linkages which you appear unwilling to acknowledge. That doesn't make them disappear. That's quite a stertch. Marx never stated anyone should be treated inhumanely. There are theorists for different ideologies who did, and therein lies the distinction. But I don't wish to enter into these sort of polemics [when] — I think we should return to working on the original passage since, as I already said, I find it far less contentious than your ''comrpomise''. Sorry, I do not see it as being one. user:El_C ::El_C makes a very important point. The fact is, Europeans had been debating about class inequality and class warfare long before Marx -- certainly, the Jacobins in the French Revolution provide a clearer example of class warriors inflicting actual harm, than Marx. Thus, Marx's mentions of class warfare are not original to Marx but really reflect the general milieu in which he wrote. What Marx adds is a Hegelian analysis of class conflict, and a revision of Hegel that takes class conflict seriously. Really, have Silverback and 168 and others who are now contributing to the article actually done historical research on this topic? No one disputes that Stalin is responsible for many deaths -- but this is something that belongs in an article on Stalin. User:Slrubenstein I've done a good deal of research in this field, if I may say so with all due humility, and I think there is a germ of validity in what Silverback is suggesting, although his wording is a bit off. Jesus is the right name to invoke here, because he said "by their fruits ye shall know them," which is the principle at issue. But ... NPOV-ly, allow me to try my hand at this. "The adoption of Marxist slogans by certain mass murderers has been something other than an unfortunate accident -- it has likely been facilitated by certain features of Marx's original statements. Insofar as Marx was, and always remained, a Hegelian, he retained the Hegelian notion that certain historical forces are on the right side of history, and that opposition to those progressive forces is objectively and scientifically regressive. This is a point of view that can well lead to ruthlessness toward those who represent a now-disgarded thesis or antithesis, in the forward dialectical march. The losers of a political struggle don't pass into a tolerated opposition status, when they are regarded as having been by history itself to a dustbin. Trotsky employed the "dustbin" image, and in time was himself consigned thereto." --User:Christofurio 21:12, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC) :Yes, surprisingly enough, Marxists believe that their opponents are wrong. But don't all people do the same? Don't you, as a capitalist, believe that communists are objectively wrong? Don't you believe that you are objectively and scientifically correct, and that your opponents are objectively and scientifically incorrect? :ALL politicians believe their opponents to be wrong; the idea that this causes mass murder is absurd. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 10:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::If true, this is a generic defect in politics. It isn't true of investing in markets, for example. If I buy Smith, Inc. stock at $5 a share, do I believe that the party selling me the stock is making the wrong decision, because I know the stock is about to rise in price and he/she/it doesn't? No. There is no such implication. I simply believe this stock adds value to MY portfolio at that price -- and make no judgment about other portfolios. See the difference? ::--User:Christofurio 14:22, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) :::Yes, but you don't seem to know the difference between subjective and objective truths. Tell me, it is ''bad'' to believe that your opponents are wrong? If that is what you're arguing, then this isn't a "defect of politics", it's a defect of ''being a human''! ::::You're the one who honed in on "politics." You said "all politicians believe their opponents are wrong." I simply followed your lead. Now what are you saying -- that your earlier statement was an undergeneralization? When one human being holds an opinion, by definition, he or she cannot also hold the opposite opinion at the same time. If you think a picture is beautiful, you must necessarely believe that anyone who says the picture is ugly must be ''wrong''. ::::Not at all. First, I'm not sure what you are defining when you say that opinions must be held exclusively "by definition." Are you defining "opinion" or "truth" or what? But, insofar as I understand you at all, the beautiful picture thing is a really lousy example. When I say that vanilla ice cream tastes great, I do not necessarily believe that anyone who dislikes it is wrong. The same, IMHO, with beautiful pictures. But that gets away from the portfolio situation, anyway, which is much more interesting for this point. When I say that it makes sense for me to buy a stock at $5., I am not saying anything subjective -- I am making an objective judgment about the risk and return and time horizons of my portfolio. My judgment is not subjective, but it is relative to a context, and another person (like the fellow who sold me that stock) could just as rationally and truly have reached an opposite conclusion in a different context. Why is that "double think???" Why is it even remotely controversial? If Marxists don't understand it, then we can conclude that they really are more conflict prone than people who do understand it. ::::And doesn't it strike you as odd that from one sentence to another you progress from "he and she cannot" believe the contrary to an assertion about "anyone" else? Surely, if I believe impressionist paintings are beautiful as a group, I don't at this moment believe them ugly. But it doesn't follow at all that I believe "anyone who says the picture is ugly must be wrong" -- with or without scare quotes. It is not wrong to differ. But thank you for making the point so well by exhibiting your own inclination to blur that distinction. That inclination has Hegelian roots. --User:Christofurio 14:08, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC) Unless you're advocating doublethink on a planetary scale, you cannot get around the fact that you cannot believe A is B and at the same time not disagree with a person who says A is C. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Why is that a "fact" that I need the "get around"? The picture is beautiful in some living rooms but I don't want that thing in my living room -- either because it isn't to me taste or because my decor is different and it would clash in this context. Everything depends upon what A, B, and C mean, and the context in which they are viewed. Lots of As are both Bs and Cs, so the person who says A is B and the one who says A is C are, indeed, both right. The notion that one of them must be wrong does have some connection with the notion that one of them must "dictate" to the other. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::I am coming around to the view that, this issue does not need to be fought here, but in Marxism. Marx should be criticized for what he did and stated, and there is enough evidence to question that he would approve of what "marxists" have done. However, I reject Mihnea Tudoreanu's argument of moral equivilency. There is a difference between thinking your -ism is right, and thinking you have a right to impose your -ism upon another. One is violent, coercive and exclusive, with the other conflict is voluntary, it can co-exist.--User:Silverback 11:56, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::There is indeed a major difference between thinking your -ism is right, and thinking you have a right to impose your -ism upon another. But Marx did not think he had a right to impose his -ism upon another. He merely argued that his -ism was right and the others were wrong - something we all believe about our respective -ism. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 12:29, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::He didn't "merely believe" that his -ism was right. He believed, so to speak, in a jealous God, the dialectic, which crushes its enemies underfoot. The self-conscious members of that class are accordingly entitled, by the nature of the world, to be dictators. Marx's word. To be a dictator is to dictate. Hence also the phrase "dustbin of history" from the lips of his disciple, Trotsky. To believe that the liquidation of "class enemies" is an accidental result of such teachings is to believe that the Crusades were only accidentally related to the exclusive aspects of monotheistic religion. It is self-serving POV bosh to refuse to make the obvious connections. --User:Christofurio 14:28, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) :::::Obvious to you, maybe. But then again, you also seem to believe that the crusades were Jesus' fault, so there's no surprise here. ::::::That is a rather cartoonish re-write of what I wrote, but since it is coming from someone who thought me a Christian reactionary monarchist not long ago, I think it may represent progress. If my POV were in fact what you once declared it was, would I have written as I have about patriarchal monotheism? Hmmmm. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) But never mind. My point isn't blaming anybody for anything. I don't blame Jesus for the Crusades, or Moses for Zionist abuses, or Mohammed for the guys in those fatal airplanes, or even Marx for Trotsky and Stalin. I do believe, though, that there are non-accidental connections here that must, unless your POV is to get the best of us, be traced. In a polytheistic world, you can worship at the temple of Venus and I can worship at that of Mercury and we aren't in competition at all, much less in a rivalry. It is only on monotheistic (or for that matter atheistic) assumptions that the question of which God, if any, is the real God, even arises. That causes problems greater than any likely to be caused by our different appraisals of the picture you're talking about, even if we agree that it must be either beautiful or ugly univocally. And, again, why the heck do you think we should agree to that??? Is it objectively true that beauty is an objective predicate? Now, if you'll remember, Marx argued for a classless society. One with no masters and servants - therefore, one with no "dictators" or anything even remotely similar. The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" was created as an antonym for the phrase "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", and, according to Marx, it simply means a kind of system where the proletariat rules. And what is "the proletariat"? Well, again according to Marx, it is the vast majority of the people. So the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a system where the vast majority of the people rule. Can you think of any other words to describe such a system? Oh yes, here's one: democracy. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:39, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Marx thought we would eventually get to a classless society. Before getting there, though, some people would have to dictate to others, and only a portion of the progressive class is self-conscious, etc. Dictators dictate. That is what they do. That is why the world's first democracy put to death the world's first moral philosopher. ::As I recently stated elsewhere, Marx was simply honest about the situation that you more or less correctly described. Marxists do speak of socialist government as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalists never speak of their form of government as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, although that's precisely what it is. Attempting to turn Marx's honesty against him in a polemical gambit will get you nowhere. User:Shorne 03:31, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Thank you for "more-or-less" acknowledging the correctness of my descriptions. You'll be happy to know that I respect Marx's honesty about this, and the honesty of his disciple Trotsky who spoke of relegating the Mensheviks to the "dustbin of history." Of course, such wheels turn and those who relegate their opponents to the dustbin are relegated there in turn, as Trotsky famously was. Insofar as I have sympathies in such matters, it is with the kulaks who are victimized by the whole process. But my point in the above-suggested addition of this article wasn't one that was for or against kulaks, Marx, or any brand of Marxists. I simply sought to draw some factual connections. I accept the fact that it isn't going to happen and I'll move the paragraph to the Marxism article, to see how it fares there. --User:Christofurio 14:30, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC) :::Shorne, perhaps your dictatorship of the bourgeoisie comment was tongue in cheek, but it did make me wonder whether lawyers were proletariat or bourgeoisie. Or do the technical definitions of the terms no longer have relevance where labor for hier are wealthy and make the laws and the some owners of the means of production can be barely getting by.--User:Silverback 12:03, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::I'm afraid I cannot parse your last sentence. In Marx's view, lawyers are in the petty bourgeoisie. Some of them are rich enough to be bourgeois themselves. Lenin discusses the relevance of Marx's analysis to First World countries. See, for example, ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/|Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism]''. User:Shorne 17:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)` :::::::Most first world people today are far richer than Marx could have imagined. The color TV, VCR, and leisure time assure that. I don't see how the categories or the dialectic apply in today's service economy, where most of the middle class don't produce "products", so there is no sense in which they can own the product of their labor and where most of the services are delivered to other members of the middle class.--User:Silverback 07:18, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::::Precisely because the middle class in the First World is not involved in production but consumes the products of others (the Third World), it is non-proletarian. Lenin spoke of imperialism as having created an "aristocracy of labour"—a class of workers in the imperialist countries (the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Israel, a few others) that is allied with the imperialist bourgeoisie because it gets a share in the exploitation of others. Even Marx and Engels, writing in the nineteenth century, described England as largely bourgeoisified. ::::::::You very aptly point out that most people in the First World merely deliver services to each other. Where do they get their food and their clothes, not to mention their colour TV sets and VCRs, if most of them are involved in an exchange of services? Those things come largely from the Third World. (And even domestic production in a country like the US is heavily dependent upon Latin American migrant workers and Chinese garment workers who are illegally employed for a small fraction of the minimum wage.) All that leisure time is enjoyed at the expense of the Third World proletariat. User:Shorne 15:58, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::Having just stumbled upon this discussion, I say that Mihnea Tudoreanu wins in a breeze. Unlike the people with whom she has been arguing here, she wants the article Karl Marx to be about Karl Marx and recognises that opinions about his philosophy and ideology do not belong here. User:Shorne 16:35, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::::I, for one, have stated no opinions whatsoever. I'm trying to work out an agreed upon way of stating an obvious and valid connection between the ideas that make Marx important enough to deserve an article and some of the actions taken in the name of those ideas that most Marxists are human enough to renounce. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::::::::At a minimum, you should notice from this discussion that your "obvious and valid connection" is a matter of opinion. The words "most Marxists are human enough to renounce" nicely illustrate that point. Wikipedia is not the place for POV, so it is inappropriate to insert your POV remarks into the article. In any case, this is the wrong article for a discussion of Marxism. Try Marxism. User:Shorne 03:31, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::::::So if I insert the same 'graf into the Marxism article you believe that the folks deleting it here will leave it in there? Hmmm. Okay, I'll do so, just to test your theory. ::::::::::Please learn to read. I didn't say that your paragraph of opinions belongs in Marxism; in fact, I said that it belongs nowhere in Wikipedia. User:Shorne 17:19, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::::::What you said was "This is the wrong article for...." implying that there is some right article, which you then specified with the sentence "Try Marxism". I did. The same material gets deleted there. Of course, the phrase "most Marxists are human enough to renounce...." doesn't belong anywhere other than in a Talk page, and I never proposed to put it anywhere else. Christofurio, this is an encyclopedia, not a chatroom. Personal opinions do not belong in articles. It is a fact that many people have criticized Marx and the article says so, as it should. But do not use this as a place to air your own views of Marx or Marxism. User:Slrubenstein :I recognize that it is an encyclopedia. I believe that any decent encyclopedia article on Marx should make clear the nature of Marx's debt to Hegel, and some of the consequences that has had. :It is irritating when some people here respond to my efforts to do that by telling me to put it elsewhere, and then delete it from the specific elsewhere that they suggested. :Furthermore, it is empirical confirmation of my point when the Marxists around here tell me that it seems obvious to them that anyone who appreciates the beauty of a painting must regard as objectively and scientifically wrong anyone who thinks that painting ugly. That is precisely the attitude I meant to describe, moved in that case to the field of aesthetic judgment. Given a Hegelian foundation, it does follow that there is a certain way to view, say, an impressionistic work that is right for this moment in the unfolding of world history, and that other views would be wrong, retrograde. But that attitude is not the only possible one -- about paintings or temples or stock prices -- and the dialectical attitude lends itself to dogmatism and intolerance. --User:Christofurio 13:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC) Christofurio, I agree that the article must acknowledge Marx's debt to Hegel. But it ''does'' so! But I strongly disagree with your interpretation of this fact. First, Hegel's dialectic does not involve (or require) one side of a conflict to dominate or destroy the other side, ruthlessly. For Hegle, the synthesis is just that, a synthesis of both the thesis and antithesis. Second, the determinism implicit in this way of thinking can and often leads to quietism, rather than ruthless political activity. Since the "revolution" is inevitable, there is no need for anyone to do anything at all. The Second International was relatively passive for this reason. It is true that more recent trends in thought, specifically, postmodernism, oppopse the ''monism'' of earlier philosophies (including Hegel, Marx -- and many others besides). This article acknowledges Hegel's influence. But this does not explain the coldness with which Marx dismissed views he did not like (one could just as well argue that Marx had a dogmatic personality that ''led'' him to a certain philosophy -- we could go in circles on this all day and get no where). And in any event, Marx himself did not ruthlessly dispose of all opposing views, he merely asserted that over time right views would come to take the place of wrong views (a belief in progress many today share, except of course postmodernists). It sounds to me like you would be better off researching postmodernism and monism (Jay wrote a good book on totalizing forms of thought, and Lyotard's original essay on postmodernism is aposit) and see if you can contribute to the article on postmodernism or articles on "progress," "monism," or "totality." These debates are extensive but do not bear directly on Marx and go far beyond the scope of this article. User:Slrubenstein ::I appreciate your thoughts and, in general, have come to have a high opinion of your work as an editor. So I won't press the point, except to say that the problem, for Hegelian traditions, arises because one faction believes that it already HAS attained the synthesis, that its opposition represents a previous stage of history, a thesis. If one says, "you are thesis, I am antithesis," that is one thing, the conclusion might be, "let is work together to create a synthesis"! But if one says, "you are thesis, I am synthesis" that is another thing entirely -- the conclusion might rather be, "what the heck are you still doing around here, I've already subsumed you!" :I appreciate your compliment, and am glad you will continue thinking about this. For the moment, let me just suggest that although Marx believed he could predict -- in very, very general terms -- what the "synthesis" would be, he did not claim to be it. One of the strengths of Marx's thought, in my opinion, is his "belief" in history, by which I do not mean that he thought he could predict the future, but rather that he believed that truths emerge over time through real-life experiences and practices. He certainly opposed various contemporaries because, in the Enlightenment tradition, he believed in critique (questioning various positions critically). In the process he certainly was sometimes dismissive of others. But don't all of us, in the course of arguments, think we are right and others are wrong? ::Yes, I believe, and everybody with whom I am familiar believes, in the existence of errors. "Error exists" is probably a more secure starting point in the struggle against methodical doubt than the one Descartes employed. Meanwhile, too few of us believe that we may have a plank in our own eye, while we look intently for the motes in the other fellows. But the notion of the historical dialectic, precisely because it sees rightness emerging through historic conflicts, tends to license ruthlessness by the victors -- who, after all, have proved their rightness by their victory. What you see as a "strength" looks like a weakness to me. Okay, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Still ... if you scroll up a bit you can see paragraphs in which Mihnea explains to me that it is illogical for anyone to believe "this picture is beautiful" without believing that the statement "this picture is not beautiful" must be wrong! I certainly believe of a lot of pictures that they are beautiful, without believing that the contrary assertion must be wrong. It is a matter of context, etc. But that is an example, in a relatively harmless sphere, of the ruthlessness that diamat encourages. As to what to do with this article, I've made a few changes in the "influences" section today. I'm sure I'll learn your opinion soon enough. --User:Christofurio 00:21, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC) At least he always believed, or said he believed, that the ultimate test of right and wrong was how things really happened and happen, which seems to me to be a way of creating a check on his own beliefs outside of himself. You may feel this is a generous reading of Marx. If you have another reading, okay -- I only ask you to back your reading up with specifics from Marx's writings, and I hope you will interpret them int he context in which Marx lived (that is, not in terms of things that others did after Marx died), User:Slrubenstein :::This article is about Marx though, and Marx, for example, viewed the stage of primitive communalism as the ''thesis'', the ancient-to-capitalist stage as the ''antithesis'', and socialist-to-Communist one as the ''synthesis''. Like Hegel, dialectical philosophy, unlike him, with an epistemological materialist basis: ''dialectical materialism''. user:El_C ::::In terms of the history of philosophy, Marxists tend to regard Descartes as thesis, Berkeley as antithesis, Hegel as synthesis. Then Hegel in turn becomes a second-order thesis, who meets his antithesis in Feuerbach, preparing for the synthesis of ... Marx. --User:Christofurio 14:03, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC) :One could also say he saw the bourgeoise as the thesis, the proletariate as the antithesis, and the classless society as the synthesis. Note that the group he supported -- the proletariate -- was a group he himself thought would be superceded. Note too that in the Communist Manifesto he has some kind words for the Bourgeois. User:Slrubenstein ::I promise to give this matter some more thought before coming back to it in either of these two articles, but to divert me to discussions of postmodernism won't work. BTW, there has been endless discussion, from which I have refrained, about the classification of Nazism as a form of socialism. I think that the usually-uncknowledged truth in that matter, too, is that the two trends are genuinely different, but they have the same grandfather. Hegel. --User:Christofurio 22:27, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC) :::I would hope it is the unacknowledged truth. They are not merely 'genuinely different', they are opposite and pronouncedly hostile to one another. At any rate, as I have said on several occasions in that aforementioned discussion (I did not refrain), the economic basis for fascism is a non-socialist, largely Keynesian economic model, it dosen't matter if the former bears similarities to socialism, it does also under liberal-democracies (''i.e.'' the New Deal, etc.). Fascists are in favour of preserving national capitalism and eradicating international socialism. Marxists further argue, that fascism, isn't simply geared towards having a strong State ''and'' capitalism, but rather, a strong State to ''protect'' capitalism (from Marxists). As evidence, they cite the growing strength of the SPD+KPD at the time, not to mention that once in power, the KPD (later also the SPD) were the first to be liquidated by the Nazis. user:El They are opposite to one another? Ah, but to a dialectician, that but bespeaks similarity! There can be no op-position without commonality of position. Anyway, I will arm myself with authority before proceeding further in this line. One of the historical scholars who does draw with great clarity the sort of connections I've been trying to draw is R.G. Collingwood, especially in his book "The Idea of History" (1946). The next time I write on these points, I'll do so as an expositor of such notables as that. --User:Christofurio 05:31, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC) 05:29, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) Sounds like a good plan. But, as mentioned bellow, I strongly urge you to submitt any proposed changes here in talk to get a feel for the consensus – especially if you suspect that people will object to these. user:El_C ===Notice=== Unless there are any objections, I will be moving the discussion above into an archive within one week (23 Nov.). user:El_C == 198 and the "so-called" edit war == When someone writes ''read closely what I just wrote, please'', that means a simple "revert" as an explanation for a revert will -not- do (''i.e.'' is discourtious). I am getting tired, sir, of the effort it takes to bring your generically-titled "reverts" to the realm of discussion here — and sadly, once that feat is attained, a rather limited discussion. I urge you to ''listen'' to what other editors are saying and to ''explain yourself'' when necessary like everyone else. Read closely, please. user:El_C It is totally superfleous – if they saw themsleves as Marxists, they believed in socialism and sought to reach ''the final phase of Communism''. There are no ''other''s here, and none of them (none) saw themsleves as ''so-called'' — so this "so-called" (which inexorably implies ''viz.'' authentic) is your POV. You have not even bothered to explain yourself, you simply continue to revert back to your changes, despite myself and 172's objections, and that is to your discredit. user:El_C I am not writing it as POV, why is there so much of an issue of this?--User:198 22:59, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC) I will point out to the other editors that this sophomoric attempt to play innocent and enter the discussion -for the very first time- this late in the day (and then ask a question which has been answered directly above and elsewhere) is an obstructionist, intelletually dishonest tactic, one which I take strong exception to. user:El_C :I will also point out to you that the only one I'm edit warring with you (and to some extent some user who goes by the name 172)--User:198 23:57, 15 Nov ::I will point out to the ''other'' editors that both user:172 and myself have made appreciable and long-lasting contributions to this articles while user:198 most certainly did not. Both user:172 and myself are always willing to explain our edits, while user:198 believes a simple "rv" will do. Note how user:198 only weeks earlier [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:El_C#Karl_Marx "gave-up on the article"] with respects to another nonesensical idée fixe – I was involved in this edit war also, but was gone for a few days, during which other editors reverted him back eough times. user:El_C ===The edit war, extracted===
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883 London, UK) was an influential Prussia philosopher, political economy, and revolutionary organizer of the International Workingmen's Association. While Marx addressed a wide range of issues, he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggle, summed up in the famous line from the introduction to the ''The Communist Manifesto'': "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle". == Biography == === Early life === Karl Marx was born into a progressive Jewish family in Prussian Trier (now in Germany). His father Herschel, descending from a long line of rabbis, was a lawyer and his brother Samuel was—like many of his ancestors—chief rabbi of Trier. In 1817 Heinrich Marx converted to the Prussian state religion of Lutheran church to keep his position as a lawyer, which he had gained under the Napoleonic regime. The Marx family was very liberalism and the Marx household hosted many visiting intellectuals and artists during Karl's early life. ==== Education ==== Marx received good marks in ''gymnasium (school),'' the Prussian secondary education school. His senior thesis, which anticipated his later development of a social analysis of religion, was a treatise entitled "Religion: The Glue That Binds Society Together", for which he won a prize. In 1833 Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn to study law, at his father's behest. He joined the Trier Tavern Club and at one point served as its president; his grades suffered as he spent most of his time singing songs in beer halls (McLellen 17). The next year, his father made him transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin (now known as the Humboldt University of Berlin). ==== Marx and Young Hegelians ==== In Berlin, Marx's interests turned to philosophy, much to his father's dismay, and he joined the circle of students and young professors known as the "Young Hegelians", led by Bruno Bauer. Some members of this circle drew an analogy between post-Aristotle philosophy and post-Hegelian philosophy. Another Young Hegelian, Max Stirner, applied Hegelian criticism and argued that stopping anywhere short of nihilism egoism was mysticism. His views were not accepted by most of his colleagues, and Karl Marx responded in parts of ''Die Deutsche Ideologie'' (The German Ideology), but decided not to publish it. Nevertheless Stirner's book was the main reason Marx abandoned the Feuerbachian view and developed the basic concept of historical materialism. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel died in 1831, and during his lifetime was an extremely influential figure at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and in German academia in general. The Hegelian establishment (known as the Right Hegelians) in place at Friedrich-Wilhelms maintained that the series of historical dialectics had been completed, and that Prussian society as it existed was the culmination of all social development to date, with an extensive civil service system, good universities, industrialization, and high employment. The Young Hegelians with whom Marx was associated believed that there were still further dialectical changes to come, and that the Prussian society of the time was far from perfect as it still contained pockets of poverty, government censorship was in place, and non-Lutherans suffered from religious discrimination. Marx was warned not to submit his doctoral dissertation at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, as it would certainly be poorly received there due to his reputation as a Young Hegelian radical. Marx instead submitted his dissertation, which compared the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus, to the University of Jena in 1840, where it was accepted. === Career === When his mentor Bruno Bauer was dismissed from the philosophy faculty in 1842, Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and went on to edit the ''Rheinische Zeitung,'' a radical Cologne newspaper. After the newspaper was shut in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government censors, Marx returned to philosophy, turned to political activism, and worked as a freelance journalism. Marx soon moved, however, something he would do often as a result of his radical views. Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship with Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote ''On the Jewish Question'', mostly a critique of current notions of civil rights and political emancipation. It was in Paris that he met and began working with his life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels, who called Marx's attention to the situation of the working class and guided Marx's interest in economics. After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved to Brussels, Belgium. There they co-wrote ''The German Ideology'', a critique of the philosophy of Hegel and the Young Hegelians. Marx next wrote ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847), a critique of French socialist thought. These works laid the foundation for Marx and Engels' most famous work, ''The Communist Manifesto'', first published on February 21, 1848, which was commissioned by the Communist League (formerly, the League of the Just), an organization of German émigrés whom Marx had met in London. That year Europe experienced revolutionary upheaval; a working-class movement seized power from King Louis Philippe in France and invited Marx to return to Paris. When this government collapsed in 1849, Marx moved back to Cologne and restarted the ''Rheinische Zeitung'', only to be swiftly expelled again. Marx's final move was to London. In 1852 Marx wrote his famous pamphlet ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'', in which he analyzed Napoleon III of France takeover of France. From 1852 to 1861, while in London, Marx contributed to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune as its European correspondent. === First International and Gladstone Quote === In 1863, Chancellor of the Exchequer William Ewart Gladstone gave a budget speech to Parliament in which he commented on the increase in the United Kingdom's national wealth, and added (according to the report of the speech in the ''Times''), "I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that it was confined to the class who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the laboring population. The augmentation I have described and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes possessed of property." But, in the semi-official version published in ''Hansard'', Gladstone deleted the final sentence (editing the ''Hansard'' version was a common practice among Members of Parliament). In 1864 Marx organized the International Workingmen's Association, later called the First International, as a base for continued political activism. In his inaugural address, he purported to quote Gladstone's speech, to the effect that, "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property." He repeated the citation in Volume 1 of ''Capital''. The discrepancy between Marx's quote and the ''Hansard'' version of the speech (which was well-known) was soon employed in an attempt to discredit the International. Marx attempted to rebut the accusations of dishonesty, but the allegation continued to resurface. Marx later gave as his source the newspaper ''The Morning Star''. Engels devoted a good deal of attention to the affair in the preface to the fourth edition of ''Capital'' — which, likewise, did not put the matter to rest. Engels claimed that it was not ''The Morning Star'' but the ''Times'' that Marx was following. Indeed, critics of Marxism such as the journalist Paul Johnson (journalist) continue to invoke Marx's supposed misquotation as evidence of general dishonesty. One can find a straightforward unravelling of this dispute in David A. Felix' work, ''Marx As Politician'' (London, 1983). The International survived the controversy, however, collapsing in 1872 in part because of the fall of the Paris Commune, and in part because many members turned to Mikhail Bakunin's anarchism. In London throughout this period, Marx also dedicated himself to the historical and theoretical research behind ''Das Kapital'' (''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy''). Marx published the first volume in 1867. The remaining two volumes of ''Capital'' were never completed by Marx, but were reconstructed by Engels from extensive notes and drafts, and published posthumously. Throughout the London period of Marx's life, his family was generally impoverished and depended on generous contributions from Engels to get by. Marx died in London in the year 1883, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. === Marital life === Marx's wife, Jenny von Westphalen, came from an aristocratic background. Her uncle was Lion Philips, father of the brothers Gerard and Anton who founded the famous Philips company in 1891. The Marxes had many children, several of whom died young — their daughter Eleanor Marx (1855-1898), born in London, was also a committed socialist and helped edit her father's works. Jenny Marx died in December 1881. == Influences on Marx's philosophy == Marx's thought was heavily influenced by both the dialectical historicism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist revolution is inevitable. However, Marx famously asserted that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to change the world. Consequently, most followers of Marx are not fatalists, but activists who believe that revolutionaries must organize social change. Marx's philosophy Historical materialism (which Engels controversially adapted as dialectical materialism) is certainly influenced by Hegel's claim that reality (and history) should be viewed dialectic, through a clash of opposing forces. Hegel believed that the direction of human history is characterized in the movement from the fragmentary toward the complete and the real (which was also a movement towards greater and greater rationality). Sometimes, Hegel explained, this progressive unfolding of the Absolute involves gradual, evolutionary accretion but at other times requires discontinuous, revolutionary leaps — episodal upheavals against existing status quo. While Marx accepted this broad conception of history, Hegel was an idealism, and Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialism terms. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that it was necessary to set it upon its feet. Marx's acceptance of this notion of ''materialist'' dialectics which rejected Hegel's idealism was greatly influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach. In ''The Essence of Christianity'', Feuerbach argued that God is really a creation of man and that the qualities people attribute to God are really qualities of humanity. Accordingly, Marx argued that it is the material world that is real and that our ideas of it are consequences, not causes, of the world. Thus, like Hegel and other philosophers, Marx distinguished between appearances and reality. But he did not believe that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary, he thought that historically and socially specific ideology prevented people from seeing the material conditions of their lives clearly. The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism was Engels' book, ''The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844'', which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution. == Marx's philosophy == The notion of labor is fundamental in Marx's thought. Basically, Marx argued that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation "labor" and the capacity to transform nature labor-power. For Marx, this is a natural capacity for a physical activity, but it is intimately tied to the human mind and human imagination: :A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. (''Capital'', Vol. I, Chap. 7, Pt. 1) Beyond his claim about the human capacity to transform nature, Marx makes no other claims about "human nature." Karl Marx inherits that Hegelian dialectic and, with it, a disdain for the notion of an underlying invariant human nature. Sometimes Marxists express their views by contrasting “nature” with “history”. Sometimes they use the phrase “existence precedes consciousness”. The point, in either case, is that who a person is, is determined by where and when he is — social context takes precedence over innate behavior; or, in other words, the main feature of human nature is adaptability. Marx did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that work is a social activity and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things, such as land, natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed from a feudalism mode of production to a capitalism mode of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or class (social)es. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources. For Marx, different classes have divergent interests, which is another source of social disruption and conflict. Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities. Commodity fetishism is an example of what Engels called false consciousness, which is closely related to the understanding of ideology. By ideology they meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which are presented as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels' point was not only that such beliefs are wrong; they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). Thus, while such ideas may be false, they also reveal in coded form some truth about political relations. For example, although the belief that the things people produce are actually more productive than the people who produced them is literally absurd, it does reflect the fact (according to Marx and Engels) that people under capitalism are alienated from their own labor-power. Another example of this sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the ''Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right:"'' :Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis argued that the primary social function of religion was to promote solidarity, here Marx sees the social function as a way of expressing and coping with social inequality, thereby maintaining the status quo. == Marx's critique of capitalism == Marx argued that this alienation of labor power (and resulting commodity fetishism) is precisely the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodity — when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to do so because they no longer possessed their own land or tools necessary to produce. People sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them to survive. Those who must sell their labor power to live are "proletarians." The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeois." (NOTE: Marx considered this an objective description of capitalism, distinct from any one of a variety of ideological claims of or about capitalism). The proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists. Marx distinguished capitalists from merchants. Merchants buy goods in one place and sell them in another; more precisely, they buy things in one market and sell them in another. Since the laws of supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants, then, practice arbitrage, and hope to capture the difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry the price for labor was lower than the price of the manufactured good. Marx called this difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus value was in fact the source of a capitalist's profit. The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly revolutionized the means of production. But Marx argued that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a certain point, the result would be a recession or depression in which certain sectors of the economy would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor would also fall, and eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the growth of new sectors of the economy. Marx believed that this business cycles of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily the enrichment and empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that were the proletariat to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises. In general, Marx thought that peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive, well-organized and violent revolution was required. Finally, he theorized that to maintain the socialist system, a dictatorship of the proletariat must be established and maintained. ==Marx's critique of bourgeois democracy and of anti-Semitism== A small number of scholars have presented an alternative reading of Marx, based on his essays ''On the Jewish Question''. Economist Tyler Cowen, historian Marvin Perry, and political scientist Joshua Muravchik have suggested that what they see as an intense hatred for the "Jewish Class" was part of Marx's belief that if he could convince his contemporaries and the public to hate Jewish capitalists, the public would eventually come to hate non-Jewish capitalists as well. Most scholars reject this claim for two reasons: first, it is based on two short essays written in the 1840s, and ignores the bulk of Marx's analysis of capitalism written in the following years. Second, it distorts the argument of ''On the Jewish Question'', in which Marx deconstructs liberal notions of emancipation. During the Enlightenment, philosophers and political theorists argued that religious authority had been oppressing human beings, and that religion must be separated from the functions of the state for people to be truly free. Following the French Revolution, many people were thus calling for the Jewish emancipation. At the same time, many argued that Christianity is a more enlightened and advanced religion than Judaism. For example, Marx's former mentor, Bruno Bauer, argued that Christians need to be emancipated only once (from Christianity), and Jews need to be emancipated twice — first from Judaism (presumably, by converting to Christianity), then from religion altogether. Marx rejects Bauer's argument as a form of Christian ethnocentrism, if not anti-Semitic. Marx proceeds to turn Bauer's language, and the rhetoric of anti-Semites, upside down to make a more progressive argument. First, he points out that Bruno Bauer's argument is too parochial because it considers Christianity to be more evolved than Judaism, and because it narrowly defines the problem that requires emancipation to be religion. Marx instead argues that the issue is not religion, but capitalism. Pointing out that anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews are fundamentally anti-capitalist, Marx provides a theory of anti-Semitism by suggesting that anti-Semites scapegoat Jews for capitalism because too many non-Jews benefit from, or are invested in capitalism, to attack capitalism directly. Marx also uses this rhetoric irony to develop his critique of bourgeois notions of emancipation. Marx points out that the bourgeois notion of freedom is predicated on choice (in politics, through elections; in the economy, through the market), but that this form of freedom is anti-social and alienating. Although Bauer and other liberals believe that emancipation means freedom to choose, Marx argues that this is at best a very narrow notion of freedom. Thus, what Bauer believes would be the emancipation of the Jews is for Marx actually alienation, not emancipation. After explaining that he is not referring to real Jews or to the Jewish religion, Marx appropriates this anti-Semitic rhetoric against itself (in a way that parallels his Hegelian argument that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction) by using "Judaism" ironically as a metaphor for capitalism. In this sense, Marx states, all Europeans are "Jewish". This is a pun on two levels. First, if the Jews must be emancipated, Marx is saying that all Europeans must be emancipated. Second, if by "Judaism" one really means "capitalism," then far from Jews needing to be emancipated from Christianity (as Bauer called for), Christians need to be emancipated from Judaism (meaning, bourgeois society). See: works by historian Hal Draper and David McLellan. See also: Roots_of_anti-Semitism#Karl_Marx.27s_.27On_the_Jewish_Question.27.. == Marx's influence == [[Image:Index.jpg|thumb|right|Marx helped prepare the [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/rules.htm provisional rules] for the First International.]] Marx and Engels' work covers a wide range of topics and presents a complex analysis of history and society in terms of class relations. Followers of Marx and Engels have drawn on this work to propose a political and economic philosophy dubbed Marxism. Nevertheless, there have been numerous debates among Marxists over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to current events and conditions (and it is important to distinguish between "Marxism" and "what Marx believed"; for example, shortly before he died in 1880, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde, and to Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue, accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggles; "if that is Marxism" — paraphrasing what Marx wrote — "then I am not a Marxist"). Essentially, people use the word "Marxist" to describe those who rely on Marx's conceptual language (e.g. mode of production, class, commodity fetishism) to understand capitalist and other societies, or to describe those who believe that a workers' revolution is the only means to a communist society. Six years after Marx's death, Engels and others founded the "Second International (politics)" as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1914, in part because some members turned to Edward Bernstein's "evolutionary" socialism, and in part because of divisions precipitated by World War I. World War I also led to the Russian Revolution and the consequent ascendance of Vladimir Lenin's leadership of the communist movement, embodied in the "Comintern". Lenin claimed to be both the philosophical and political heir to Marx, and developed a political program, called Leninism or Bolshevik, which called for revolution organized and led by a centrally organized Communist Party. After Lenin's death, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, seized control of the Party and state apparatus. He argued that before a world-wide communist revolution would be possible, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to dedicate itself to building communism in its own country. At this time, Leon Trotsky left the Soviet Union and in 1934 founded the competing "Fourth International." Some followers of Trotsky argued that Stalin had created a bureaucratic state rather than a socialist state. In China Mao Zedong also claimed to be an heir to Marx, but argued that peasants and not just workers could play a leading role in a Communist revolution. This was a profound departure from Marx's own view of revolution, which focused exclusively on the urban proletariat, and which he believed would take place in advanced industrial societies such as France, Germany and England. Marxism-Leninism as espoused by Mao came to be internationally known as Maoism. In the 1920s and '1930s, a group of dissident Marxists founded the Institute for Social Research in Germany, among them Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. As a group, these authors are often called the Frankfurt School. Their work is known as Critical theory (Frankfurt School), a type of Marxist philosophy and cultural criticism heavily influenced by Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, and Max Weber. The Frankfurt School broke with earlier Marxists, including Lenin and Bolshevism in several key ways. First, writing at the time of the ascendance of Stalinism and Fascism, they had grave doubts as to the traditional Marxist concept of proletarian class consciousness. Second, unlike earlier Marxists, especially Lenin, they rejected economic determinism. While highly influential, their work is often criticized for reducing Marxism to a purely academic enterprise. Other influential non-Bolshevik Marxists at that time include Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg. Henryk Grossmann, who elaborated the mathematical basis of Marx's 'law of capitalist breakdown', was another contemporary. These figures, including but not limited to the Frankfurt School, are often known by the term Western Marxism. In 1949 Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman founded ''Monthly Review'', a journal and press, to provide an outlet for Marxist thought in the United States independent of the Communist Party of the United States of America. == Contemporary criticism == Many proponents of capitalism have argued that capitalism is a more effective means of generating and redistributing wealth than socialism or communism, and that the gulf between rich and poor that concerned Marx and Engels was a temporary phenomenon. Some suggest that greed and the need to acquire capital is an inherent component of human behavior, and is not caused by the adoption of capitalism or any other specific economic system (although economic cultural anthropology have questioned this assertion,) and that different economic systems reflect different social responses to this fact. The Austrian School of economics has criticized Marx's use of the labor theory of value. In addition, the political repression and economic problems of several historical socialisms have done much to destroy Marx's reputation in the Western countries, particularly following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Marx has also been criticized from the Left. Evolutionary and democratic socialism reject his claim that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Others argue that class is not the most fundamental inequality in history and call attention to patriarchy or race. Some today question the theoretical and historical validity of "class" as an analytic construct or as a political actor. In this line, some question Marx's reliance on 19th century notions that linked science with the idea of "progress" (see social evolution). Many observe that capitalism has changed much since Marx's time, and that class differences and relationships are much more complex — citing as one example the fact that much corporate stock in the United States is owned by workers through pension funds. Still others criticize Marx from the perspective of philosophy of science. Karl Popper has criticized Marx's theories as he believed they were not falsifiable, which he argued would render some particular aspects of Marx’s historical and socio-political arguments unscientific. Primarily, this stems from Marx's assertion that class revolt will be part of the process in overcoming capitalism. The argument goes that the critic says "this will not happen" to which the reply is "but it will." However it has been argued that such statements show a simplistic understanding or a deliberate misinterpretation, because the reply has no basis in Marxist theory. A common critique of Marx points out that the increasing class antagonisms he predicted never actually developed in the Western world following industrialization. While socioeconomic gaps between the bourgeoisie and proleteriat remained, industrialization in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom also saw the rise of a middle class not inclined to violent revolution. While the economic devastation of the Great Depression broadened the appeal of Marxism in the developed world, future government safeguards and economic recovery led to a decline in its influence. In contrast, Marxism remained extremely influential in feudalism and economically backwards societies such as Czarist Russia, where the October Revolution was successful. [http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.10009,filter.all/pub_detail.asp] Openly Marxist political parties and movements have significantly declined since the fall of the Soviet Union. Critics argue that the Soviet Union's numerous internal failings and subsequent collapse were a direct result of the practical failings of Marxism, but modern-day Marxists, especially Trotskyism, tend claim that the Soviet Union's political system did not represent true communism. Marx analyzed the world of his day and refused to draw up plans of how a future socialist society should be run saying he did not "write recipes...for cook-shops of the future." Outside Europe and the United States, communism has generally been superseded by anti-colonialist and nationalism struggles which sometimes appeal to Marx for theoretical support. Contemporary supporters of Marx argue most generally that Marx was correct that human behavior reflects determinate historical and social conditions (and is therefore changing and can not be understood in terms of some universal "human nature"). More specifically, they argue his analysis of commodities is still useful and that alienation is still a problem. ==Miscellaneous== *The message carved on Marx's tombstone, in Highgate Cemetery, London - a monument built in 1954 by the British Communist Party - is: ''"Workers of all lands, unite"''. Before 1954, Marx's tomb was hard to find and humbly adorned. ==References== * Stepen Jay Gould, ''[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_7_108/ai_55698600/pg_1 A Darwinian Gentleman at Marx's Funeral - E. Ray Lankester]'', Page 1, [http://www.findarticles.com/ Find Articles.com] (1999). (Marx's tomb) * Daniel Little, ''The Scientific Marx'', University of Minnesota Press (1986), trade paperback, 244 pages, ISBN 0816615055 (Marx's work considered as science) * David McLellen ''Karl Marx: His Life and Thought'' * Francis Wheen, ''Karl Marx'', Fourth Estate (1999), ISBN 1857026373 (biography of Marx) == See also == *Friedrich Engels *Marxism *''Das Kapital'' *The Frankfurt School *History of socialism ==External links== ===Bibliography and Online Texts=== * [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ Internet archive of Marx & Engels works] ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ ''Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right] (1843)'' ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/ ''On the Jewish Question''] (1843) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/ ''Notes on James Mill''] (1844) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm ''Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844''] (1844) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm ''Theses on Feuerbach''] (1845) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ ''The German Ideology''] [with Engels] (1845-46) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ ''The Poverty of Philosophy''] (1846-47) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ ''Wage-Labour and Capital''] (1847) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ ''Manifesto of the Communist Party''] [with Engels] (1847-48) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte''] (1852) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ ''Grundrisse''] (1857-58) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''] (1859) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm ''Writings on the U.S. Civil War''] [with Engels; compiled] (1861) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ ''Theories of Surplus Value, 3 volumes''] (1862) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ ''Value, Price and Profit''] (1865) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm ''Capital vol. 1''] (1867) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ ''The Civil War in France''] (1871) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ ''Critique of the Gotha Programme''] (1875) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm ''Notes on Wagner''] (1883) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume36/ ''Capital, vol. 2''] [posthumously, by Engels] (1893) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ ''Capital, vol. 3''] [posthumously, by Engels] (1894) ** [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/index.htm ''Letters''] [with Engels; compiled] (1833-95) ** ''Ethnological Notebooks'' — ISBN 9023209249 (1879-80) * [http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Marx,%20Karl Project Gutenberg: Karl Marx] * [http://www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/akmc.htm: Ehrbar´s Marx Annotations] [Contemporary Annotations to Marx´ Writings, from a critical realist perspective. Facilitates understanding of central points often omitted] ===Biographies=== * ''Vladimir Lenin's'' [http://welshcommunists.co.uk/karl.htm Karl Marx Biography] * ''Franz Mehring's'' [http://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1918/marx/ch01.htm Karl Marx: The Story of His Life] * ''Francis Wheen's'' [http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj85/morgan.htm The Man Behind the Mask] ===Portraits=== * [http://www.iisg.nl/collections/marx/index.html Portraits of Karl Marx] ===Encyclopedia entries=== * [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry] 1818 births 1883 deaths 19th Century philosophers Economists German philosophers Atheist philosophers Secular Jewish philosophers Marxist theorists Communists Revolutionaries bn:কার্ল মার্ক্স fa:کارل مارکس gd:Karl Marx jv:Karl Marx la:Carolus Marx ms:Karl Marx zh-min-nan:Karl Marx simple:Karl Marx th:คาร์ล มาร์กซ
Karl Marx
==Archives== *Talk:Karl Marx/archive 1 *Talk:Karl Marx/Archive 2 *Talk:Karl Marx/Hegelian Infleunces ==Patriarchal Monotheism and the Hegelian Dialectic== :::Jesus was one figure within the older history of patriarchal monotheism. I think it is fair to say that such a view of the world is likely to give rise to forced conversions to the cause of the "one true God" and to such events as the Crusades, or to people who fly airplanes into skyscrapers. Likewise, if the one true God wears a Hegelian garb. --User:Christofurio 14:31, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::::First you over-generalize ("one figure within the older history of patriarchal monotheism"), then you kindly give me your baseless opinion ("I think it is fair to say that such a view of the world is likely to..."). The second statement needs no further refutation than the fact that it is ''not'' fair to say anything without a good reason. The first statement is equivalent to saying "Marx was one figure within the older history of philosophical materialism", or even "Marx was one figure within the older history of the human species". You could then say that human beings, being meat-eaters, are likely to be somewhat prone to kill, and that Marxism, being a political current with human beings as adherents, is likely to share that general human trend. This is an argument against humanity in general, not an argument against Marx or Marxism. See my point? -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::No, I don't see your point. I don't even concede that meat-eaters are more likely to start wars than vegetarians. Nor have I made any argument against humanity in general. Heck, I didn't even make any argument against Marxism (or Christianity, or monotheism). My point, which is impeccably NPOV, concerns non-accidental linkages which you appear unwilling to acknowledge. That doesn't make them disappear. That's quite a stertch. Marx never stated anyone should be treated inhumanely. There are theorists for different ideologies who did, and therein lies the distinction. But I don't wish to enter into these sort of polemics [when] — I think we should return to working on the original passage since, as I already said, I find it far less contentious than your ''comrpomise''. Sorry, I do not see it as being one. user:El_C ::El_C makes a very important point. The fact is, Europeans had been debating about class inequality and class warfare long before Marx -- certainly, the Jacobins in the French Revolution provide a clearer example of class warriors inflicting actual harm, than Marx. Thus, Marx's mentions of class warfare are not original to Marx but really reflect the general milieu in which he wrote. What Marx adds is a Hegelian analysis of class conflict, and a revision of Hegel that takes class conflict seriously. Really, have Silverback and 168 and others who are now contributing to the article actually done historical research on this topic? No one disputes that Stalin is responsible for many deaths -- but this is something that belongs in an article on Stalin. User:Slrubenstein I've done a good deal of research in this field, if I may say so with all due humility, and I think there is a germ of validity in what Silverback is suggesting, although his wording is a bit off. Jesus is the right name to invoke here, because he said "by their fruits ye shall know them," which is the principle at issue. But ... NPOV-ly, allow me to try my hand at this. "The adoption of Marxist slogans by certain mass murderers has been something other than an unfortunate accident -- it has likely been facilitated by certain features of Marx's original statements. Insofar as Marx was, and always remained, a Hegelian, he retained the Hegelian notion that certain historical forces are on the right side of history, and that opposition to those progressive forces is objectively and scientifically regressive. This is a point of view that can well lead to ruthlessness toward those who represent a now-disgarded thesis or antithesis, in the forward dialectical march. The losers of a political struggle don't pass into a tolerated opposition status, when they are regarded as having been by history itself to a dustbin. Trotsky employed the "dustbin" image, and in time was himself consigned thereto." --User:Christofurio 21:12, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC) :Yes, surprisingly enough, Marxists believe that their opponents are wrong. But don't all people do the same? Don't you, as a capitalist, believe that communists are objectively wrong? Don't you believe that you are objectively and scientifically correct, and that your opponents are objectively and scientifically incorrect? :ALL politicians believe their opponents to be wrong; the idea that this causes mass murder is absurd. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 10:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::If true, this is a generic defect in politics. It isn't true of investing in markets, for example. If I buy Smith, Inc. stock at $5 a share, do I believe that the party selling me the stock is making the wrong decision, because I know the stock is about to rise in price and he/she/it doesn't? No. There is no such implication. I simply believe this stock adds value to MY portfolio at that price -- and make no judgment about other portfolios. See the difference? ::--User:Christofurio 14:22, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) :::Yes, but you don't seem to know the difference between subjective and objective truths. Tell me, it is ''bad'' to believe that your opponents are wrong? If that is what you're arguing, then this isn't a "defect of politics", it's a defect of ''being a human''! ::::You're the one who honed in on "politics." You said "all politicians believe their opponents are wrong." I simply followed your lead. Now what are you saying -- that your earlier statement was an undergeneralization? When one human being holds an opinion, by definition, he or she cannot also hold the opposite opinion at the same time. If you think a picture is beautiful, you must necessarely believe that anyone who says the picture is ugly must be ''wrong''. ::::Not at all. First, I'm not sure what you are defining when you say that opinions must be held exclusively "by definition." Are you defining "opinion" or "truth" or what? But, insofar as I understand you at all, the beautiful picture thing is a really lousy example. When I say that vanilla ice cream tastes great, I do not necessarily believe that anyone who dislikes it is wrong. The same, IMHO, with beautiful pictures. But that gets away from the portfolio situation, anyway, which is much more interesting for this point. When I say that it makes sense for me to buy a stock at $5., I am not saying anything subjective -- I am making an objective judgment about the risk and return and time horizons of my portfolio. My judgment is not subjective, but it is relative to a context, and another person (like the fellow who sold me that stock) could just as rationally and truly have reached an opposite conclusion in a different context. Why is that "double think???" Why is it even remotely controversial? If Marxists don't understand it, then we can conclude that they really are more conflict prone than people who do understand it. ::::And doesn't it strike you as odd that from one sentence to another you progress from "he and she cannot" believe the contrary to an assertion about "anyone" else? Surely, if I believe impressionist paintings are beautiful as a group, I don't at this moment believe them ugly. But it doesn't follow at all that I believe "anyone who says the picture is ugly must be wrong" -- with or without scare quotes. It is not wrong to differ. But thank you for making the point so well by exhibiting your own inclination to blur that distinction. That inclination has Hegelian roots. --User:Christofurio 14:08, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC) Unless you're advocating doublethink on a planetary scale, you cannot get around the fact that you cannot believe A is B and at the same time not disagree with a person who says A is C. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Why is that a "fact" that I need the "get around"? The picture is beautiful in some living rooms but I don't want that thing in my living room -- either because it isn't to me taste or because my decor is different and it would clash in this context. Everything depends upon what A, B, and C mean, and the context in which they are viewed. Lots of As are both Bs and Cs, so the person who says A is B and the one who says A is C are, indeed, both right. The notion that one of them must be wrong does have some connection with the notion that one of them must "dictate" to the other. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::I am coming around to the view that, this issue does not need to be fought here, but in Marxism. Marx should be criticized for what he did and stated, and there is enough evidence to question that he would approve of what "marxists" have done. However, I reject Mihnea Tudoreanu's argument of moral equivilency. There is a difference between thinking your -ism is right, and thinking you have a right to impose your -ism upon another. One is violent, coercive and exclusive, with the other conflict is voluntary, it can co-exist.--User:Silverback 11:56, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::There is indeed a major difference between thinking your -ism is right, and thinking you have a right to impose your -ism upon another. But Marx did not think he had a right to impose his -ism upon another. He merely argued that his -ism was right and the others were wrong - something we all believe about our respective -ism. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 12:29, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::He didn't "merely believe" that his -ism was right. He believed, so to speak, in a jealous God, the dialectic, which crushes its enemies underfoot. The self-conscious members of that class are accordingly entitled, by the nature of the world, to be dictators. Marx's word. To be a dictator is to dictate. Hence also the phrase "dustbin of history" from the lips of his disciple, Trotsky. To believe that the liquidation of "class enemies" is an accidental result of such teachings is to believe that the Crusades were only accidentally related to the exclusive aspects of monotheistic religion. It is self-serving POV bosh to refuse to make the obvious connections. --User:Christofurio 14:28, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) :::::Obvious to you, maybe. But then again, you also seem to believe that the crusades were Jesus' fault, so there's no surprise here. ::::::That is a rather cartoonish re-write of what I wrote, but since it is coming from someone who thought me a Christian reactionary monarchist not long ago, I think it may represent progress. If my POV were in fact what you once declared it was, would I have written as I have about patriarchal monotheism? Hmmmm. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) But never mind. My point isn't blaming anybody for anything. I don't blame Jesus for the Crusades, or Moses for Zionist abuses, or Mohammed for the guys in those fatal airplanes, or even Marx for Trotsky and Stalin. I do believe, though, that there are non-accidental connections here that must, unless your POV is to get the best of us, be traced. In a polytheistic world, you can worship at the temple of Venus and I can worship at that of Mercury and we aren't in competition at all, much less in a rivalry. It is only on monotheistic (or for that matter atheistic) assumptions that the question of which God, if any, is the real God, even arises. That causes problems greater than any likely to be caused by our different appraisals of the picture you're talking about, even if we agree that it must be either beautiful or ugly univocally. And, again, why the heck do you think we should agree to that??? Is it objectively true that beauty is an objective predicate? Now, if you'll remember, Marx argued for a classless society. One with no masters and servants - therefore, one with no "dictators" or anything even remotely similar. The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" was created as an antonym for the phrase "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", and, according to Marx, it simply means a kind of system where the proletariat rules. And what is "the proletariat"? Well, again according to Marx, it is the vast majority of the people. So the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a system where the vast majority of the people rule. Can you think of any other words to describe such a system? Oh yes, here's one: democracy. -- User:Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:39, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Marx thought we would eventually get to a classless society. Before getting there, though, some people would have to dictate to others, and only a portion of the progressive class is self-conscious, etc. Dictators dictate. That is what they do. That is why the world's first democracy put to death the world's first moral philosopher. ::As I recently stated elsewhere, Marx was simply honest about the situation that you more or less correctly described. Marxists do speak of socialist government as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalists never speak of their form of government as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, although that's precisely what it is. Attempting to turn Marx's honesty against him in a polemical gambit will get you nowhere. User:Shorne 03:31, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Thank you for "more-or-less" acknowledging the correctness of my descriptions. You'll be happy to know that I respect Marx's honesty about this, and the honesty of his disciple Trotsky who spoke of relegating the Mensheviks to the "dustbin of history." Of course, such wheels turn and those who relegate their opponents to the dustbin are relegated there in turn, as Trotsky famously was. Insofar as I have sympathies in such matters, it is with the kulaks who are victimized by the whole process. But my point in the above-suggested addition of this article wasn't one that was for or against kulaks, Marx, or any brand of Marxists. I simply sought to draw some factual connections. I accept the fact that it isn't going to happen and I'll move the paragraph to the Marxism article, to see how it fares there. --User:Christofurio 14:30, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC) :::Shorne, perhaps your dictatorship of the bourgeoisie comment was tongue in cheek, but it did make me wonder whether lawyers were proletariat or bourgeoisie. Or do the technical definitions of the terms no longer have relevance where labor for hier are wealthy and make the laws and the some owners of the means of production can be barely getting by.--User:Silverback 12:03, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::I'm afraid I cannot parse your last sentence. In Marx's view, lawyers are in the petty bourgeoisie. Some of them are rich enough to be bourgeois themselves. Lenin discusses the relevance of Marx's analysis to First World countries. See, for example, ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/|Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism]''. User:Shorne 17:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)` :::::::Most first world people today are far richer than Marx could have imagined. The color TV, VCR, and leisure time assure that. I don't see how the categories or the dialectic apply in today's service economy, where most of the middle class don't produce "products", so there is no sense in which they can own the product of their labor and where most of the services are delivered to other members of the middle class.--User:Silverback 07:18, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::::Precisely because the middle class in the First World is not involved in production but consumes the products of others (the Third World), it is non-proletarian. Lenin spoke of imperialism as having created an "aristocracy of labour"—a class of workers in the imperialist countries (the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Israel, a few others) that is allied with the imperialist bourgeoisie because it gets a share in the exploitation of others. Even Marx and Engels, writing in the nineteenth century, described England as largely bourgeoisified. ::::::::You very aptly point out that most people in the First World merely deliver services to each other. Where do they get their food and their clothes, not to mention their colour TV sets and VCRs, if most of them are involved in an exchange of services? Those things come largely from the Third World. (And even domestic production in a country like the US is heavily dependent upon Latin American migrant workers and Chinese garment workers who are illegally employed for a small fraction of the minimum wage.) All that leisure time is enjoyed at the expense of the Third World proletariat. User:Shorne 15:58, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::Having just stumbled upon this discussion, I say that Mihnea Tudoreanu wins in a breeze. Unlike the people with whom she has been arguing here, she wants the article Karl Marx to be about Karl Marx and recognises that opinions about his philosophy and ideology do not belong here. User:Shorne 16:35, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::::I, for one, have stated no opinions whatsoever. I'm trying to work out an agreed upon way of stating an obvious and valid connection between the ideas that make Marx important enough to deserve an article and some of the actions taken in the name of those ideas that most Marxists are human enough to renounce. --User:Christofurio 18:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC) ::::::::At a minimum, you should notice from this discussion that your "obvious and valid connection" is a matter of opinion. The words "most Marxists are human enough to renounce" nicely illustrate that point. Wikipedia is not the place for POV, so it is inappropriate to insert your POV remarks into the article. In any case, this is the wrong article for a discussion of Marxism. Try Marxism. User:Shorne 03:31, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::::::::So if I insert the same 'graf into the Marxism article you believe that the folks deleting it here will leave it in there? Hmmm. Okay, I'll do so, just to test your theory. ::::::::::Please learn to read. I didn't say that your paragraph of opinions belongs in Marxism; in fact, I said that it belongs nowhere in Wikipedia. User:Shorne 17:19, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::::::::What you said was "This is the wrong article for...." implying that there is some right article, which you then specified with the sentence "Try Marxism". I did. The same material gets deleted there. Of course, the phrase "most Marxists are human enough to renounce...." doesn't belong anywhere other than in a Talk page, and I never proposed to put it anywhere else. Christofurio, this is an encyclopedia, not a chatroom. Personal opinions do not belong in articles. It is a fact that many people have criticized Marx and the article says so, as it should. But do not use this as a place to air your own views of Marx or Marxism. User:Slrubenstein :I recognize that it is an encyclopedia. I believe that any decent encyclopedia article on Marx should make clear the nature of Marx's debt to Hegel, and some of the consequences that has had. :It is irritating when some people here respond to my efforts to do that by telling me to put it elsewhere, and then delete it from the specific elsewhere that they suggested. :Furthermore, it is empirical confirmation of my point when the Marxists around here tell me that it seems obvious to them that anyone who appreciates the beauty of a painting must regard as objectively and scientifically wrong anyone who thinks that painting ugly. That is precisely the attitude I meant to describe, moved in that case to the field of aesthetic judgment. Given a Hegelian foundation, it does follow that there is a certain way to view, say, an impressionistic work that is right for this moment in the unfolding of world history, and that other views would be wrong, retrograde. But that attitude is not the only possible one -- about paintings or temples or stock prices -- and the dialectical attitude lends itself to dogmatism and intolerance. --User:Christofurio 13:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC) Christofurio, I agree that the article must acknowledge Marx's debt to Hegel. But it ''does'' so! But I strongly disagree with your interpretation of this fact. First, Hegel's dialectic does not involve (or require) one side of a conflict to dominate or destroy the other side, ruthlessly. For Hegle, the synthesis is just that, a synthesis of both the thesis and antithesis. Second, the determinism implicit in this way of thinking can and often leads to quietism, rather than ruthless political activity. Since the "revolution" is inevitable, there is no need for anyone to do anything at all. The Second International was relatively passive for this reason. It is true that more recent trends in thought, specifically, postmodernism, oppopse the ''monism'' of earlier philosophies (including Hegel, Marx -- and many others besides). This article acknowledges Hegel's influence. But this does not explain the coldness with which Marx dismissed views he did not like (one could just as well argue that Marx had a dogmatic personality that ''led'' him to a certain philosophy -- we could go in circles on this all day and get no where). And in any event, Marx himself did not ruthlessly dispose of all opposing views, he merely asserted that over time right views would come to take the place of wrong views (a belief in progress many today share, except of course postmodernists). It sounds to me like you would be better off researching postmodernism and monism (Jay wrote a good book on totalizing forms of thought, and Lyotard's original essay on postmodernism is aposit) and see if you can contribute to the article on postmodernism or articles on "progress," "monism," or "totality." These debates are extensive but do not bear directly on Marx and go far beyond the scope of this article. User:Slrubenstein ::I appreciate your thoughts and, in general, have come to have a high opinion of your work as an editor. So I won't press the point, except to say that the problem, for Hegelian traditions, arises because one faction believes that it already HAS attained the synthesis, that its opposition represents a previous stage of history, a thesis. If one says, "you are thesis, I am antithesis," that is one thing, the conclusion might be, "let is work together to create a synthesis"! But if one says, "you are thesis, I am synthesis" that is another thing entirely -- the conclusion might rather be, "what the heck are you still doing around here, I've already subsumed you!" :I appreciate your compliment, and am glad you will continue thinking about this. For the moment, let me just suggest that although Marx believed he could predict -- in very, very general terms -- what the "synthesis" would be, he did not claim to be it. One of the strengths of Marx's thought, in my opinion, is his "belief" in history, by which I do not mean that he thought he could predict the future, but rather that he believed that truths emerge over time through real-life experiences and practices. He certainly opposed various contemporaries because, in the Enlightenment tradition, he believed in critique (questioning various positions critically). In the process he certainly was sometimes dismissive of others. But don't all of us, in the course of arguments, think we are right and others are wrong? ::Yes, I believe, and everybody with whom I am familiar believes, in the existence of errors. "Error exists" is probably a more secure starting point in the struggle against methodical doubt than the one Descartes employed. Meanwhile, too few of us believe that we may have a plank in our own eye, while we look intently for the motes in the other fellows. But the notion of the historical dialectic, precisely because it sees rightness emerging through historic conflicts, tends to license ruthlessness by the victors -- who, after all, have proved their rightness by their victory. What you see as a "strength" looks like a weakness to me. Okay, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Still ... if you scroll up a bit you can see paragraphs in which Mihnea explains to me that it is illogical for anyone to believe "this picture is beautiful" without believing that the statement "this picture is not beautiful" must be wrong! I certainly believe of a lot of pictures that they are beautiful, without believing that the contrary assertion must be wrong. It is a matter of context, etc. But that is an example, in a relatively harmless sphere, of the ruthlessness that diamat encourages. As to what to do with this article, I've made a few changes in the "influences" section today. I'm sure I'll learn your opinion soon enough. --User:Christofurio 00:21, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC) At least he always believed, or said he believed, that the ultimate test of right and wrong was how things really happened and happen, which seems to me to be a way of creating a check on his own beliefs outside of himself. You may feel this is a generous reading of Marx. If you have another reading, okay -- I only ask you to back your reading up with specifics from Marx's writings, and I hope you will interpret them int he context in which Marx lived (that is, not in terms of things that others did after Marx died), User:Slrubenstein :::This article is about Marx though, and Marx, for example, viewed the stage of primitive communalism as the ''thesis'', the ancient-to-capitalist stage as the ''antithesis'', and socialist-to-Communist one as the ''synthesis''. Like Hegel, dialectical philosophy, unlike him, with an epistemological materialist basis: ''dialectical materialism''. user:El_C ::::In terms of the history of philosophy, Marxists tend to regard Descartes as thesis, Berkeley as antithesis, Hegel as synthesis. Then Hegel in turn becomes a second-order thesis, who meets his antithesis in Feuerbach, preparing for the synthesis of ... Marx. --User:Christofurio 14:03, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC) :One could also say he saw the bourgeoise as the thesis, the proletariate as the antithesis, and the classless society as the synthesis. Note that the group he supported -- the proletariate -- was a group he himself thought would be superceded. Note too that in the Communist Manifesto he has some kind words for the Bourgeois. User:Slrubenstein ::I promise to give this matter some more thought before coming back to it in either of these two articles, but to divert me to discussions of postmodernism won't work. BTW, there has been endless discussion, from which I have refrained, about the classification of Nazism as a form of socialism. I think that the usually-uncknowledged truth in that matter, too, is that the two trends are genuinely different, but they have the same grandfather. Hegel. --User:Christofurio 22:27, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC) :::I would hope it is the unacknowledged truth. They are not merely 'genuinely different', they are opposite and pronouncedly hostile to one another. At any rate, as I have said on several occasions in that aforementioned discussion (I did not refrain), the economic basis for fascism is a non-socialist, largely Keynesian economic model, it dosen't matter if the former bears similarities to socialism, it does also under liberal-democracies (''i.e.'' the New Deal, etc.). Fascists are in favour of preserving national capitalism and eradicating international socialism. Marxists further argue, that fascism, isn't simply geared towards having a strong State ''and'' capitalism, but rather, a strong State to ''protect'' capitalism (from Marxists). As evidence, they cite the growing strength of the SPD+KPD at the time, not to mention that once in power, the KPD (later also the SPD) were the first to be liquidated by the Nazis. user:El They are opposite to one another? Ah, but to a dialectician, that but bespeaks similarity! There can be no op-position without commonality of position. Anyway, I will arm myself with authority before proceeding further in this line. One of the historical scholars who does draw with great clarity the sort of connections I've been trying to draw is R.G. Collingwood, especially in his book "The Idea of History" (1946). The next time I write on these points, I'll do so as an expositor of such notables as that. --User:Christofurio 05:31, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC) 05:29, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) Sounds like a good plan. But, as mentioned bellow, I strongly urge you to submitt any proposed changes here in talk to get a feel for the consensus – especially if you suspect that people will object to these. user:El_C ===Notice=== Unless there are any objections, I will be moving the discussion above into an archive within one week (23 Nov.). user:El_C == 198 and the "so-called" edit war == When someone writes ''read closely what I just wrote, please'', that means a simple "revert" as an explanation for a revert will -not- do (''i.e.'' is discourtious). I am getting tired, sir, of the effort it takes to bring your generically-titled "reverts" to the realm of discussion here — and sadly, once that feat is attained, a rather limited discussion. I urge you to ''listen'' to what other editors are saying and to ''explain yourself'' when necessary like everyone else. Read closely, please. user:El_C It is totally superfleous – if they saw themsleves as Marxists, they believed in socialism and sought to reach ''the final phase of Communism''. There are no ''other''s here, and none of them (none) saw themsleves as ''so-called'' — so this "so-called" (which inexorably implies ''viz.'' authentic) is your POV. You have not even bothered to explain yourself, you simply continue to revert back to your changes, despite myself and 172's objections, and that is to your discredit. user:El_C I am not writing it as POV, why is there so much of an issue of this?--User:198 22:59, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC) I will point out to the other editors that this sophomoric attempt to play innocent and enter the discussion -for the very first time- this late in the day (and then ask a question which has been answered directly above and elsewhere) is an obstructionist, intelletually dishonest tactic, one which I take strong exception to. user:El_C :I will also point out to you that the only one I'm edit warring with you (and to some extent some user who goes by the name 172)--User:198 23:57, 15 Nov ::I will point out to the ''other'' editors that both user:172 and myself have made appreciable and long-lasting contributions to this articles while user:198 most certainly did not. Both user:172 and myself are always willing to explain our edits, while user:198 believes a simple "rv" will do. Note how user:198 only weeks earlier [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:El_C#Karl_Marx "gave-up on the article"] with respects to another nonesensical idée fixe – I was involved in this edit war also, but was gone for a few days, during which other editors reverted him back eough times. user:El_C ===The edit war, extracted===
1.(cur) (last) 23:02, 4 Nov 2004 user:198 (marxist)
2.(cur) (last) 03:52, 5 Nov 2004 user:El C (RV. Marxist is superfleous, esp. at op. as Communist = Marxist, so-called is POV - even self-proclaimed would be problematic -at-this-point-in-the-article- ==> read closely what I just wrote, please.)
3.(cur) (last) 21:52, 5 Nov 2004 user:198 (revert)
4.(cur) (last) 23:57, 5 Nov 2004 user:172 (Rv superfleous and POV edit to last version by El C. Please read comments by El C on talk)
5.(cur) (last) 20:01, 9 Nov 2004 user:198 (Marxist)
6.(cur) (last) 22:37, 9 Nov 2004 user:172 (RV. Marxist is superfleous, esp. at op. as Communist = Marxist, so-called is POV)
7.(cur) (last) 01:44, 11 Nov 2004 user:198 (marxist)
8.(cur) (last) 02:32, 11 Nov 2004 user:El C (198 has responded on my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:El_C#Our_discourse_is_over.2C_198 talk page]: "I will revert until Doomsday." Thus far it is the -only- comment he made as to his changes (& still no explanation). I urge the administrators to have him blocked.)
9.(cur) (last) 01:15, 12 Nov 2004 Special:Contributions/891
10.(cur) (last) 14:13, 12 Nov 2004 user:Slrubenstein m (Reverted edits by 891 to last version by El C)
11.(cur) (last) 18:32, 15 Nov 2004 user:198 m (His writings formed the basis of later Communist, socialist, and so-called Marxist movements.)
12.(cur) (last) 19:28, 15 Nov 2004 user:El C (RV. It is an edit war because 198 and his purported friend "John" (891 ) are the ones engaging in one, refusing throughout any discussion whatsoever. Unlike 172 & myself.)
13.(cur) (last) 19:52, 15 Nov 2004 user:198 m (revert)
14.(cur) (last) 19:57, 15 Nov 2004 user:Shorne (Reverting an obviously unacceptable POV attack. Hoping that the "arbitrators" won't ban me on the grounds that this article is on a German subject.)
15.(cur) (last) 19:57, 15 Nov 2004 user:198 (Revert)
16.(cur) (last) 19:58, 15 Nov 2004 user:Shorne m
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user:El_C
===Is Special:Contributions/891 a sockpuppet of user:198 ?===
Considering the exact edit to which 198 has committed himself to "reverting until Doomsday" (while refusing to explain his stance), and the clear resmeblance of user name, it seems likely. I urge the admins to curtail such misconduct.user:El_C
:No it wasn't, however I was telling my friend John about the edit war on Karl Marx so he agreed to help me.--User:198 22:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I will point out to the other editors that this help consisted on merely re-inserting the disputed excerpt, no defence for which has yet to be provided, whatsoever. user:El_C
:I don't approve of what John did.--User:198 23:55, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
::I agree that the intransigence of 198 calls for administrative intervention. Unfortunately, that will take several months. Please proceed immediately to make a request for mediation at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation. I will support it if allowed to make any comments; apparently a political double standard applies. If 198 refuses to accept mediation, you may—and should—proceed straight to arbitration. Let me know if I can offer any support. User:Shorne 00:05, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:::Why are you people doing this to me? Is it because I'm conservative?--User:198 00:09, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
::::You're conservative? That isn't obvious, and I doubt could be grounds for doing this. I don't understand this edit war. Why is "so-called Marxist" important/more accurate/better than leaving it out? It's reasonable to know why you persistantly change it, right? User:Cool Hand Luke Luke">User talk:Cool Hand Luke 03:15, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
--------
No, my time is too precious to waste on administrative proceedings against a troll. It dosen't matter that I know with absolute certainty that whomever is conducting this proceeding will side with myself, user:172, user:slrubenstein, and user:Shorne over user:198. Trust me everyone, you want me expending my energy doing more productive things. I have outlined the evidence though, and anyone who wishes to launch such a process in-my-name can count on my support. Sorry, I got more important things to do in WP than have anything to do with trolls beyond this. user:El_C
----
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I've already wasted countless hours against VeryVerily and Boraczek in administrative proceedings that obviously aren't going to pay off. The whole site is biased in favour of such trolls, especially if they come from the right. Unfortunately for me, such people are absolutely impossible, and the rotten administration that favours them has lumped me in together with them as an "edit warrior". It's a bizarre form of colour blindness that prevents one from distinguishing black from white. User:Shorne 13:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
==Talk:Karl Marx/Hegelian Infleunces revisited==
See the recently archived Talk:Karl Marx/Hegelian Infleunces for details of the discussion (which in the end went slightly off-topic) between Christofurio and myself, a discussion which resulted in changing [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Karl_Marx&oldid=7205840 this] –into– [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Karl_Marx&oldid=7329717 this].user:El_C
== "Miscellaneous" ==
What is the point of the section "Miscellaneous"? To air personal opinions? It seems to be a mixed bag of junk.
Some of the material is just wrong. Mao did not split the international communist movement over the issue of whether the peasantry could lead a socialist revolution in certain countries. Although some people on the left thought at the time that Mao was wrong, he proved himself right when the revolution succeeded in seizing state power in China, and subsequently in Korea, Vietnam, and other countries. The split occurred over issues of socialist development, with the Chinese (and Albanian) side accusing the Soviet Union of revisionism and the restoration of capitalism. User:Shorne 12:51, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:The difference between saying "X caused a split in the M movement by believing Z and acting accordingly" and saying, "X did believe Z, and others within M thought this was wrong" is a matter of degree. Saying "X was later proved right" doesn't change the fact that there was a split. Further, it isn't clear to me what "proved right" means, since the seizure of state power wasn't supposed to be a goal in itself. Further, the later issues of development are closely related to the earlier issue of the nature of the revolution.
:As to the section "Miscellaneous," there is such a section in several articles, especially biographical ones. I'll speak only of my own contribution to it.
:I thought that it was odd to have a biographical entry on Karl Marx that doesn't so much as mention his famous gravesite, or the inscription there. Sort of like performing Hamlet without Polonius. Once I included that information, I also thought it would be appropriate to interrogate the brief five-word phrase in the way you see I've done. It does foreshadow a complicated legacy and its splits. --User:Christofurio 14:29, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
::No one refuses to acknowledge that China had a revolution that was led by the peasantry, not the proletariat (which was tiny then and still is in the minority). Even if a split had occurred over the question of the possibility of a revolution led by the peasantry, it could not have endured once Mao (and subsequently Hồ and others) had proven that such a revolution was indeed possible.
::The section "Miscellaneous" imparts a slight POV: it seems to complain that Marx didn't answer every possible question about the course of socialist development. Marx never purported to know every detail of how communism would come about; that would have been the height of arrogance, and indeed Marx and other Marxists have denounced the notion that theory can be divorced from practice. User:Shorne 01:46, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:::You are, of course, free to edit, and I'll be happy to see the result. I think something along these lines ought to be included, although it is certainly possible I allowed a hostile POV to seep through in my wording of it. One disagreement over fact that you and I may have involves the nature of the split. Was it just a tactical one ("can Mao win his revolution if its led by peasantry?") or was it also a definitional split ("will it really be a Marxist revolution if it is won largely inder the leadership of peasantry?"). If it was the latter, then Mao's success in seizing state power did not resolve it, although that clearly transformed the terms of it. --User:Christofurio 14:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Shorne is correct, the split occured -after- the PRoC was founded – initially, relations with the Soviet Union were more than cordial, they were fratetnal – after the split though, the PRoC saw the Soviet Union as a greater threat than the U.S. user:El_C
The split was present within the Chinese Communist Party in the mid 1920s. It was resolved in favor of a peasant-oriented revolution largely because in April 1927 Chiang Kaishek ordered a massacre of communists and other militant workers in the cities. Over the next few months CCP membership dropped from 60 thousand to just ten thousand. The survivors were the ones in the countryside. --User:Christofurio 14:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
::I know that. The reference was to the "Sino-Soviet split," ''i.e.'' -after- the establishment of the PRoC – following which, the Soviets provided them with industrial infrastructure, credit, trainers, etc. (later withdrawn). user:El_C
:::The contested sentence in the article simply says this, "Mao Zedong would one day split world communism with his view that the agrarian proletariat could take the lead." It doesn't identify this generic theoretical split with the specific geopolitical Sino-Soviet split. Although I would also say that the two splits are related -- and perhaps here we disagree. I think in terms of his appeal to the communists of Albania, the fact that Mao had won a peasant-oriented revolution was important. --User:Christofurio 18:45, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
There is more to it, is all I'm saying (much of which will prove decisive in the Lushan Plenum, the unilateral abrogation of the armes deal – allegedly meant to include an atomic bomb – by Khrushchev, the fate of Péng Déhuái, etc.). See, for example (sorry, writing in haste), Meisner's ''A History of the People's Republic'', pp. 244-251. user:El_C
== External links for Stirner vs Marx ==
It is a general policy of wikipedia to avoid external links whenever possible. The reason is simple: there is no guarantee that an external link will live or will contain the same information. There is nothing more frustrating than to wade through dead links.
:For some reason Mikkalai you missed quite a number of external links on this articles page. Why the oversight?--User:Silverback 23:39, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:: Thanks. It is an oversigt indeed. The section said "Bibliography", and I didin't pay attention they are all external. All references from the save archive. IMO it is sufficient to leave only the root webpage. User:Mikkalai 23:56, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In this particular case, if you feel that the debaete Stirner-Marx is important, please write the corresponding article and write what you feel is important, preferrably without referring to external links. We write the encyclopedia ourselves, not just collect links from everywhere. We are not link farm.
:A separate article is not needed the relationship between the two is noted on this page and on the stirner page.User:Silverback
Just imagine what will the article look like if we start adding all links that discuss Marx. Try run google for "Karl Marx".User:Mikkalai 17:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:Why imagine that, it is just a strawman argument. Why don't you just imagine if all of marx's works were pasted right into this article, after all they are no longer under copyright, and we have quotes so the slippery slope has started. Go to each work of Marx and just scroll each one from beginning to end. BTW, run google for "stirner", you will find that marx, engels and stirner are the neo-hegelians whose work is still being actively debated.--User:Silverback 23:39, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
: We are talking about external references here. Excessive quoting is a different issue, although comparable. I have nothing against Stirner. I don't know him and probably don't want to know. I am against external links, which present the problem of maintenance. User:Mikkalai 23:56, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Prev. discussion, at my usertalkpage
For the record, I want to note that I agree with the anon's deletion of those two links, even though I was the one who submitted the last one (to counter the one precededing it). But tis not important enough for me to expend lots of energy on.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. user:El_C
:It wasn't anon, it was Mikkalai. On what basis do you agree with the deletion, it can't be relevancy, and certainly not "encyclopedic", the external links don't have to conform to that standard. look at the external links on racialism, neither one is encyclopedic. You "all" argument is specious. None of Marx's other intellectual exchanges are of other than historical interest. Stirners ideas are alive and in conflict with Marx's today. We would be able to prioritize these easily. The external links are a good way to point to the living debates.--User:Silverback 09:16, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
::I actually see it in terms of them being of no more than historical interest ''to you'', or conversely, encompassing your POV of what is of merely historical interest ''viz.'' what is 'alive today.' Thus, your priorities reflect this distortion. How is it 'more alive today' ? Do you really think that (and Stirner, in general) sums up these living debates? (!). I disagree. user:El_C
:::I had no problem with your link, it was perfectly acceptable, I just did not think I should have to fight Mikkalai's indefensible deletions alone. I did not recall who had made that addition, so thought that leaving it out would enlist their participation, since it looked like Mikkalai was going to be anti-communitarian. Note that my first response included your link, but on the off chance that, Mikkalai found yours offensive, I tested just restoring mine. I will be happy to assist in the defense of yours, by both action and argument, if yours comes under attack. --User:Silverback 15:44, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
::::I am glad to learn that, but I had a problem with your link – which is to say, I find it is not suited for this article. I will not reiterate my comments above, but let's pretend I did. user:El_C
Jeez - Sitrner is mentioned once in the article, but two links at the bottom of the page are about him. This makes no sense at all. If Marx' career was widely viewed in terms of a grand rivalry between him and Stirner, that would be one thing. But that is quite transparently not the case. Both links are on the page for Max Stirner. I am deleting them from this article on the grounds of insufficient salience to the topic at hand.
What might be worth persuing is an internal links section called "Contemporaries and Commentors" - those remembered in part because Marx discussed them (e.g. Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and yes, even Stirner) and those who are known in part because of their comments about Marx. Hate Marx or love him, he is the central figure in any narrative about him. In terms of fame and significance he towers over pretty much all the people connected to him in the mind of the modern reader. This is the reality of public perspectives on Marx - the consensus reality, if you like - and the article should reflect it.
User:Diderot 17:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:Yes, because of his influence on history, Marx towers over Stirner, but in terms of whose ideas are academically and intellectually alive today rather than merely being of historical interest, Stirner is at least an equal. Face it, nihilism, however unfortunately, has intellectually conquered all these leap-of-faith ideologies. To the extent Marx's ideas are alive today, they are in contraposition to Stirner's and these links are good examples of that.--User:Silverback 17:55, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
== Questions section ==
Hello, I disagree with the retension of the "questions" section -- I believe it should at least be rephrased not to be in that form, if not excised. I understand that it is interesting, and provides a nice way to introduce other topics, but there must be some other way that doesn't have that kind of strange tone that I don't think fits in the encyclopedia. --User:Improv 05:56, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:The section is more like signed encylopedia articles with an author's voice. I have no problem with voice being changed, but they are not rhetorical questions and are informative and should be kept until someone is willing to rearchitect the information. Perhaps there is even a voice that retains the questions, something like "These questions arose and resulted in divisions...", or "Differences in how these questions unanswered by Marx, led to..."--User:Silverback 07:28, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
==Marx was not an economist==
Every econmist I have met has agreed that Karl Marx was not an Econmist.--User:198 00:52, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:Yeah. Doodlin' around, he accidentally scribed Das Kapital some morons think somehow related to Econmy. User:Mikkalai 01:29, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::good work I must say that Mikkala! :)--User:198 01:38, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::I guess you've never met a Cuban economist. User:Ruy Lopez 07:15, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are two questions here: what is an economist, and what was an economist in the 1830s-1850s? 198 seems to think that an economist is whoever other economists say an economist is. I actually don't think this is a terrible way of answering the question, but it does just raise the next questions which are, how did you know that the people you (198) asked are economists? (a question that shows that you are just begging the question as this leads to infinite regress) and, how do those economists decide that "x" is an economist and "y" isn't? This is not such a simple question to answer, which is why I think it is pointless to say in the article "Marx was not an economist." User:Slrubenstein
Still, let's try to answer it. Aside from begging the question the problem with asking economists who is an economist is that economists (or Jews or Republicans) may have different ideas of what makes someone an economist (or, etc.) So when you ask somewhat "who is an economist" you learn as much if not more about their ''beliefs'' about economics, as you do about x (or in this case, Marx). IF all economists believe the same things, and have always believed the same things, you might get away with this. But I doubt this is the case. User:Slrubenstein
Here is a pragmatic answer to the question: an economist is someone who gets a PhD. in economics, or who teaches in an economics department. I bet that this actually covers all the "economists" polled by 198 so I am hoping s/he will find this an acceptable definition. User:Slrubenstein
So here is my question: when Marx went to University in the 1830s, and when he was looking for jobs in the 1840s, ''were there departments of Economics'' in which he could have gotten a degree or a job? I don't think so. The fact is, I think the whole question of "was Marx an economist'' is an ''anachronistic'' question and basically meaningless. User:Slrubenstein
*The same thing must go for Adam Smith too :) .. Would you say that a philosopher must be someone who got a PhD in economics or teaches in a department? I don't think so. Economists, like philosophers, are as such because of what they do, not what letters they have after their name. --User:Improv 23:02, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Marx certainly wrote about economic topics, and you can argue that he did so from the point of view of a philosopher (what his degree was in) or an historian (and he may very well have considered this to be the case). But since he wrote about economic topics, why not call him an economist? User:Slrubenstein
I can think of only one reason why it would be a bad idea to call Marx an economist: economists today do not read his work, or consider his ideas -- that is, he is irrelevant to economists today, so to call him an economist would be ''misleading''. I think this is a pretty good kind of reason for not calling him an economist, we don't want to mislead anyone. BUT we get to NPOV issues. Yes, in NATO countries Marx may not be assigned in economics courses. But what about Cuba? In any event, I would go even further and say that Marx's ideas are in fact relevant to the ideas of some Western -- Nobel prize winning! -- economists such as Steiglitz, Krugman, and Sen. Now, they may not represent the majority of economists, but certainly we can all agree they are economists. I am not saying any of them are Marxists, by the way, only that Marx's ideas about the importance of class for example have been relevant to the work of these guys, maybe even more relevant than the work of Milton Friedman or even Hayak. So why not call him an economist? (note: it's a rhetorical question. My point is not that we should or should not call him an economist. I think it is a dumb question) User:Slrubenstein
*Not every scientist's theories are still studied. I would submit that economists are the same way, but neither should disqualify someone from being considered an economist or scientist. --User:Improv 23:02, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well Slrubenstein, most econmist i've met say the term "Political Econmist," "Ecomonic Philsophier" fit Marx better than per-se "Econmists." However I do admit I'm biased because I don't really feel Marx was an Econmist. For one thing Marx doesn't even know the basic economic law of supply and demand (and yes I've read some of his works).--User:198 02:07, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:"By what is the price of a commodity determined? By the competition between buyers and sellers, by the relationship of the demand to the supply, of the call to the offer." Karl Marx ''Wage-labour and Capital'' first published in 1849 (quote is from 1933 English translation p. 21; the opening of chapter 3). Marx understood that this applied to the labor-market (wages) as well: "The relations bewtween supply and demand of labour undergo perpetual changes, and with them the market price of labour. If the demand overshoots the supply, wages rise; if the supply overshoots the demand, the wages sink ..." from ''Value, Price and Profit'', an address given in 1865 (quote is from the 1933 English translation, p. 25; it is the middle of section 4 of the address). Now, 198, please tell me why you think that Marx "doesn't even know the basic economic law of supply and demand?" You say that you have read some of his works, but even here you reveal that you just do not understand Marx. Anyone can edit a wikipedia article; we don't ask you to be a professor of Marxism or Marxology or whatever, we don't expect you to have a PhD. in history, philosophy, economics, or whatever. But really, you shouldn't work on an article about something you don't understand. Surely there are things you really do know well, and understand. I suggest you write articles about those things. User:Slrubenstein 02:35, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::That's very interesting. I haven't read that work but I will check it out when I visit the Library this Friday. I read the Communist Manifesto and some of Das Kapital (it was quite a while ago). I still feel the term Poltical Econmist is still better than calling Marx an "Econmist." I understand Marx quite well, dispite that I'm not a Professor of Political Science, I'm a Professor of Marketing.--User:198 05:47, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Some people will agree about "political economist," others would disagree. What about something like "He studied (or wrote about) economics and political economy?" User:Slrubenstein
:That seems fine. For the record, he was as much an economist as Ricardo or Mill, which is to say he was a student of "political economy", and of what is now called classical economics; Das Kapital was the most systematic analysis of capitalism of the time. User:Rd232 23:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Marx was a widely read theoretical writer on the subject of economics. That clearly makes him an economist, more so because he lived in the times before economics was even available as a university course. User:Zocky 05:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== conflict theory ==
I reverted the addition of a section on conflict theory. Marx never proposed conflict theory; conflict theory is the name given by sociologists who believe themselves to be applying Marxian principles to the study of certain social issues. As such, this deserves its own article, linked to sociology. User:Slrubenstein 20:00, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I disagree, Marx's Conflict Theory or Conflict Persective is RELVENT to the article.--User:198 02:21, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that Marx's concept of class struggle etc belongs here. But it is not appropriate to copy/paste a mini-essay on Marxist conflict theory here (especially so unedited!). We have conflict theory, Social-conflict theory (which incidentally needs merging into the former), critical theory and Critical theory (Frankfurt School), and you could create a new article eg critical theory (Marxist) if you wanted to. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Critical_Theory and the appropriate category ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Critical_theory]). Wherever the text goes, the article can be linked to from here, but Marx's contribution as the "founder" shouldn't be discussed here in terms of the conceptualisation and terminology of a century later - that is appropriate elsewhere. User:Rd232 08:57, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
*Concur with Rd232 -- the added section is badly written and does not contribute to the article in either content or appearance. --User:Improv 15:40, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
::The text dump by 198 was unsalvageable. This article is not a dumping ground for mini-essays on conflict theory just as the (say) Durkheim article would not be a duping ground for someone's mini-essay on functionalism. User:172 18:17, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Whoah, whoah! 172 is right on target, but if 198 didn't understand my explanation for deleting this material the first time, I imagine he will not understand 172's point. So I will now try to make it ''crystal clear'' why the material does not belong here.
There are some ''major'' confusion here. The section I deleted was called "critical theory" but the content concerned "conflict theory" and now someone is talking about Marx's theory of "class struggle" '''These are ''three'' distinct things!''' Marx definitely had much to say about the class struggle, and ''this is already represented in the article.''
But "Critical theory" and "Conflict theory" ''are theories that were not developed by Marx, and do not belong in this article.'' I gave my reasons above, and 198 simply wrote that he disagrees. He then once again identified it as "Marx's conflict theory." There is no such thing: Marx never proposed or wrote about \"conflict theory.\" Never. "Conflict theory" is a body of theory developed by sociologists in the 20th century, long after Marx died. It is true that in developing this theory they drew on Marx's writings, but that does not mean Marx developed these theories. Moreover, "Conflict theory" draws equally on many other sources: Georg Simmel, most notably but it traces its origins even further back to Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Some conflict theorists emphasize their intellectual debt to Marx and call themselves marxists (which still does not mean the Marx shared any of their ideas -- remember, Marx is already dead when these people developed their theories). Moreover, many conflict theorists (e.g. Dahrendorf and Collins) are explicitly ''anti-Marx'' -- and they are very important conflict theorists. So I repeat: there is ''no such thing'' as "Marx's conflict theory." ANY discussion of conflict theory should go in a Conflict Theory article.
Finally, "Critical Theory" (1) was not created by Marx and (2) is not at all the same thing as Marx's theory of class struggle, and not at all the same thing as Conflict Theory. Critical Theory also has its own article, but to be clear here, Critical Theory is a theory developed by Horkheimer and Adorno at the Frankfort School ''in 1930!'' Almost ''fifty years after'' Marx died! It is true again that the Critical Theorists read and quoted Marx -- but that does not mean that Marx wrote about critical theory! Moreover (as is the case with Conflict Theory) Marx is ''only one'' influence on Critical Theory -- Weber and Freud were equally important. So there is no basis for talking about "Marx's Critical Theory" --'''it doesn't exist'''.
Conflict theory (no "Marx's") and Critical theory (no "Marx's") ''do'' exist -- but they have their own articles.
The Karl Marx article should be about the life and work of Karl Marrx, not about theories developed by people fifty years after he lived. To be frank, I find it hard to believe that you have done any serious research, if you did not know these things. User:Slrubenstein 18:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:Ok, I understand what your talking about....I seen the article Conflict theory.--User:198 05:05, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
== "Even" Engels' discussion didn't put the matter to rest? ==
This re-working of the dispute over that Gladstone quote is a botch, and highly point of view. Consider the word "even," which implies that one should naturally have expected Engels' account to put the matter to rest, but some trouble-makers have persisted in raising it anyway. A bit like saying, "Even the fact that Kissinger has vouched for Pinochet's good character has not put to rest questions...." Anyway, I'll see what can be done to put this passage back on an even keel, if not "to rest," when I get a chance. --User:Christofurio 14:04, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
:Would you mind summing up Marx or Engels' explanation for the discrepancy? Do we know which version of Gladstone's speech is the original? User:Slrubenstein 22:17, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'll link you to Engels' "explanation" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/brentano/ch01.htm
Its long-winded and adds new obfuscations to those of his partner. My concern was that wikipedia not simply take the Marx-Engels side, which would be the case if we use a sentence like "Even Engels' discussion didn't put the matter to rest!"!
I think it safe to say (here on the Talk page, anyway) that the consensus of historians today is quite the ot