Karl Marx And His Major Works Part 2

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier in Prussia, now, Germany. He was one of seven children of Jewish Parents. His father was fairly liberal, taking part in demonstrations for a constitution for Prussia and reading such authors as Voltaire and Kant, Known for their social commentary. His mother, Henrietta, was originally from Holland and never became a German at heart, not even learning to speak the Language properly. Shortly before Karl Marx was born, his father convened the family to the Evangelical Established Church, Karl being baptized at the age of six.

Marx attended high school in his home town (1830-1835) where several teachers and pupils were under suspicion of harboring liberal ideals. Marx himself seemed to be a devoted Christian with a “longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity.” In October of 1835, he started attendance at the University of Bonn, enrolling in non- socialistic-related classes like Greek and Roman mythology and the history of art. During this time, he spent a day in jail for being “drunk and disorderly-the only imprisonment he suffered” in the course of his life. The student culture at Bonn included, as a major part, being politically rebellious and Marx was involved, presiding over the Tavern Club and joining a club for poets that included some politically active students. However, he left Bonn after a year and enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy.

Marx’s experience in Berlin was crucial to his introduction to 1-fegel’s philosophy and to his “adherence to the Young Hegelians.” Hegel’s philosophy was. Crucial to the development of his own ideas and theories. Upon his first introduction to Hegel’s beliefs, Marx felt repugnance and wrote his father that when he felt sick, it was partially “from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view [he] detested.” The Hegelian doctrines exerted considerable pressure in the “revolutionary student culture” that Marx was immersed in, however, and Marx eventually joined a society called the Doctor Club, involved mainly in the “new ternary and philosophical movement” who’s chief figure was Bruno Bauer, a lecturer in theology who thought that the Gospels were not a record of History but that they came from “human fantasts arising from man’s emotional needs” and he also hypothesized that Jesus had not existed as a person. Bauer was later dismissed from his position by the Prussian government. By 1841, Marx’ studies. Were lacking and, at the suggestion of a friend. ‘submitted’ a doctoral dissertation to the university at Jena, know’ for having” ax acceptance requirements. Unsurprisingly, he got in’ a finally received his degree in 1841. His thesis “analyzed in a Hegelian fashion the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus” using his knowledge of mythology and the myth of Prometheus in his chains.

In October of 1842, Marx became the editor of the paper Rheinische Zeitung, and, as the editor, wrote editorials on socioeconomic issues such as poverty, etc. During this time, he found that his “Hegelian philosophy was of little use” and he separated himself from his young Hegelian friends who only shocked the bourgeois to make up their “social activity.” Marx helped the paper to succeed and almost became the leading journal in Prussia. However, the Prussian government suspended it because of “pressures from the government of Russia.” So, Marx went to Paris to study “French communism.”

In June of 1843, he was married to Jenny Von Westphalia, an attractive girl, four years older than Marx, who came from a prestigious family of both military and administrative distinction. Although many of the members of the Von Westphalia family were opposed to the marriage, Jenny’s father favored Marx. In Paris, ‘flarx became acquainted with the Communistic views of French I workmen. Although. He thought that the ideas of the workmen were utterly crude and unintelligent,” he admired their camaraderie. . Hi later wrote an article entitled 7oward the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right” from which comes the famous quote that religion is the “opium of the people.

Once again, the Prussian government interfered with Marx and he was expelled from France. He left for Brussels, Belgium, and, in 1845, renounced his Prussian nationality. During the next two years in Brussels, the lifelong collaboration with Engels deepened further. He and Marx, sharing the same views, pooled their “intellectual resources” and published The Holy Family, a criticism of the Hegelian idealism of Bruno Bauer. In their next work, they demonstrated their materialistic conception of history but the book found no publisher and “remained unknown during its author’s lifetimes.”

It is during his years in Brussels that Marx really developed his views and established his “intellectual standing.” From December of 184710 January of 1848, Engels and Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, a document outlining 10 immediate measures towards Communism, “ranging from a progressive income tax and the abolition of inheritances to free education for all children.”

When the Revolution erupted in Europe in 1848, Marx was invited to Paris just in time to escape expulsion by the Belgian government. He became unpopular to German exiles when, while in Paris, he opposed Georg Hewish’s project to organize a German legion to invade and “liberate the Fatherland. “After travelling back to Cologne, Marx called for democracy and agreed with Engels that the Communist League should be disbanded. During this time, Marx got into trouble with the government; he was indicted on charges that he advocated that people not pay taxes. However, after defending himself in his trial, he was acquitted unanimously. On May 16, 1849, Marx was “banished as an alien” by the Prussian government.

Marx then went to London. There, he rejoined the Communist League and became more bold in his revolutionary policy. He advocated that the people try to make the revolution “permanent’ and those they should avoid subservience to the bourgeois peoples. The faction that he belonged to ridicule his ideas and he stooped attending meetings of the London Communists, working on the defiance of 11 communists arrested in Cologne, instead. He wrote quite a few works during this time, including an essay entitled “Der Achtzenhnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte” (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) and also a pamphlet written on the behalf of the 11 communists he was defending in Cologne. From 1850 to 1864, Marx lived in poverty and ‘spiritual pain,” only taking a job once. He and his family were evicted from their apartment and several of his children died, his son, Guido, who Marx called a sacrifice to bourgeois misery” and a daughter named Franziska. They were so poor that his wife had to borrow money for her coffin.

Frederich Engels was the one who gave Marx and his family money to survive on during these years. His only other source of money was his job as the European correspondent for The New York Tribune, writing editorials and columns analyzing everything in the apolitical universe.” Marx published his first book on economic theory in 1859, called A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

Marx’s “political isolation” ended when he joined the International Working Men’s Association. Although he was neither the founder nor the leader of this organization, he “became its leading spirit’ and as the corresponding secretary for Germany, he attended all meetings. Marx’s distinction as a political figure really came in 1870 with the Paris Commune. He became an international figure and his name “became synonymous throughout Europe with the revolutionary spirit symbolized by the Paris Commune An opposition to Marx developed under the leadership of a Russian revolutionist, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. Bakunin was a ‘famed orator whose speeches one listener described as “a raging storm with lightning, flashes and thunderclaps, and a roaring as of ns.” Bakunin admired Marx’s intellect but was personally opposed him because Marx had an “ethnic aversion” to Russians. Bakunin believed that Marx was a “German authoritarian and an arrogant Jew who wanted to transform the General council into a personal dictatorship over the workers.” Bakunin organized sections of the international for an attack on the “dictatorship” of Marx and the General Council. Marx didn’t have the support of a right wing and feared that he would lose control to Bakunin. However, he was successful at expelling the Bakuninists from the International and the International died out in New York.

During the next decade of his life, his last few years, Marx beset by what he called “chronic mental depression” and “his life. Inward toward his family.” He never completed any substantial during this time although he kept his mind active, reading and learning. Russian in 1879, Marx dictated the preamble of the am for the French Socialist Workers’ Federation and shaped of its content.