Marx+and+Marxism

Joanna Cheng


 * Marx and Marxism
 * Beginning of Marxism found in 1848 w/ publication of a short treatise entitled //The Communist Manifesto//, written by two Germans, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
 * Marx born into relatively prosperous middle-class family in Trier in W. Germany
 * Descended from long line of Jewish rabbis although his father, a lawyer, had become Protestant to keep his job
 * Marx enrolled at University of Bonn in 1835, year later his carefree student ways led his father to send him to more serious-minded University of Berlin—encountered ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 * After receiving Ph.D. in philosophy, planned to teach at a university—unable to obtain a position because of his professed atheism, Marx decided to upon a career in journalism and eventually became the editor of a liberal bourgeois mewspaper in Cologne in 1842—newspaper suppressed due to radical views
 * Moved to Paris and met Friedrich Engels, lifelong friend and financial patron
 * Engels son of wealthy German cotton manufacturer had worked in Britain at one of his father’s factories in Manchester—acquired first-hand knowledge of what he came to call “wage slavery” of British working classes, he detailed in an indictment of industrial life entitled //The Conditions of the Working Class in England//
 * Contribute knowledge of actual working conditions as wells as monetary assistance to financially strapped Marx
 * 1847, Marx and Engels joined tiny group of primarily German socialist revolutionaries known as Communist League: advocates of radical working-class movement and agreed to draft a statement of their ideas for the league
 * Resulting //Communist Manifesto//, published in German in January 1848, appeared on the eve of the revolutions of 1848—passed unnoticed
 * Marx’s ideas partly a synthesis of French and German thought—French provided Marx w/ ample documentation for his assertion that a revolution could totally restructure society, also provided him w/ several examples of socialism
 * Hegel—Marx took idea of dialectic; everything evolves and all change in history is the result of clashes between antagonistic elements/but disagreed w/ Hegel’s belief that history is determined by ideas manifesting themselves in historical forces—instead, Marx said course of history is determined by material force
 * Marx and Engels predicted workers would eventually overthrow their bourgeois masters
 * Proletariat would form a dictatorship to reorganize means of production
 * Classless society would emerge, and the state—itself an instrument of the bourgeoisie—would wither away since it no longer represented the interest of a particular class
 * Class struggles would be over—believed this would lead to progress in science, technology, and industry and to greater wealth for all
 * Working Classes (Proletariat)
 * Working classes needed organizations that would fight for improved working conditions and reasonable wages—but liberal bourgeoisie condemned such associations as criminal agencies that threatened private property through use of strikes and pickets
 * Didn’t stop gradual organization of trade unions in 1860s—conservative regimes sanctioned formation of trade unions in order to gain popular support against liberals
 * Real change for industrial proletariat would only come w/ development of socialist parties and socialist trade unions—emerged after 1870

Sources: AP Achiever, Wikipedia