Karl Marx (1844)


In a recent poll taken the BBC of their readership and listeners, Karl Marx was voted as the most important philosopher.  Given that the poll was taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before the 2008 crash, this result may be a little surprising.  But as the readers evidently know, but philosophers no longer do, Karl Marx remains relevant to the conditions of modern life and capitalism.  A short but easily approachable introduction to the thought of Karl Marx is Jonathan Wolff, Why Read Marx Today?  (Oxford, 2002).

Marx is instrumental in discussing the central problems of modern life.  It is Marx who gave us a critique of the problem of alienation, of exchange value and labor theory.  Above all, it is Marx who provided the basis for historical materialism as an analysis of social conditions and who provided a script for agency and action.  It is customary to divide Marx into two periods,  his writings before 1848 which include his development of historical materialism and alienation, and those after 1850 in which he develops a critique of political economy, including his magnum opus,  Capital (1867). The best website online to read Marx is found at the Marxists.org Archive.  

Born in 1818 in Trier Germany into a Jewish family, at university Karl Marx studied law, the profession of his father, but abandoned that for a doctorate in philosophy.  After graduation he chose to work as a journalist and to become politically active.  His journalism landed him in political difficulty with authorities and he was forced into exile to live variously in Belgium, France and England.  Chronically short of money throughout his life, it was his friendship with Friedrich Engels, a son of a prosperous manufacturer that provided Marx with intellectual and some monetary support.    

Marx became integrally involved in socialist causes and was influenced by a movement of young scholars who followed Hegel’s teaching on philosophy and history.  This exposed him to theories of historical materialism which he began to critique and develop through his own critical inquiry into the relation of production and social class.  He was integrally involved in supporting and organizing revolutions in Europe in 1848, when he wrote his famous revolutionary pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto.  


In our excerpt form the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, we read Marx's analysis of alienation and labor.
Here is a news article about dangerous conditions of workers in hi-tech plants manufacturing Apple I-Pads and other devices in China.  How does this reflect Marx's concern with alienation and labor?  See also this Huffington Post piece.  Consider the other paradox of alienation of labor from the products produced in this video of the riots by consumers in China fighting to buy newly released I-Phones.

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