"Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." - Karl Marx, as inscribed upon his tomb.

Marx as Philosopher

Karl Marx - the father of modern Communism - was born in Trier, Germany on the 5th of May 1818, into a comfortable middle-class home. He came from a strongly Rabbinical family, but his father Heinrich had renounced Judaism that he might practice Law, and the young Karl followed in his father's footsteps and went off to Bonn University to study Law. Before a year was out he had to leave Bonn, leaving a drunken trail of "wild rampaging", in his father's words, behind him. Returning to Treir he became formally engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen, and then returned to studying, this time Philosophy in Berlin. Here he discovered Hegel, and a radical new way of thinking.

Hegelianism instead of looking for constants in the world, put change at the centre of its theory, and gave a dynamic picture of history and inevitable change through conflict, the process of evolution no less (though he did not extend it to the natural world). Marx was 'seduced' by these ideas but found the Hegelians too bound up in progress of ideas, what interested him were the realities of daily life, the needs of the individual: food, work, community, and the evolution of the systems by which these needs were met. And in the conflict between the needs of the people and the formal structure of society Marx based his theories.

Underlaying this, Marx belived in progress, that society and the lot of the individual must improve over time¹, and that this was an unstoppable natural evolution of the social order.

'transformation of quantity into quality.'

Marx as Politician

On graduation Marx left Berlin and went into journalism, editing 'Rheinische Zeitung', the main liberal journal on Cologne. THis was no mere wage earner for Marx, it was a haven in which he could develop and research his forming ideas and a platform from which he could broadcast his polemic.

His investigative jounalism conserned the conflicts between the needs of men and the law - a law which banned the collecting of firewood, the crippling poverty of the Moselle winegrowers - and lead Marx, almost unavoidably, to Socialism.

1844 Paris, Engels and Belgium. 1846 The German Ideology

Marx as Revolutionary

Forms Communist Leage 1848 Commmunist Manifesto London. First International. Bakunin.

Reaction to Paris Commune

Marx as Economist

1867 Das Kapital (Vol 1) is published. 1871 - Paris Commune.

The Legacy of Marx

Leninism.

Trotskism.

Gramskism.

Maoism.

Zapatisimo.

"Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough" - Karl Marx, Last words.