Biography of Karl Marx

Karl Marx is the revolutionary founding father of communism and Marxism, while Niccolo Machiavelli expounded upon the concept of realism through his work The Prince. These two concepts have been the foundations that various countries and governments have tried to utilize in hopes of constructing a utopian society.

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier Germany, studying history, philosophy, and law at the universities of Berlin, Jena, and Bonn. Karl Marx did not like the production portion of Capitalism; he found it to be a signal of great trouble. Marx believed that the production stage of capitalism worked in a way that the rich owners of these companies benefited whereas the poor workers did not. So the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. (Marx 1994, p119-142) Marx believed that the need to meet society’s individuals’ desires leads to production, that practical activity in a practical world leads to the desire to meet the needs of the people in society. This economic philosophy ties into Marxism; the concept that any given political development was a result of class conflict, where the exploiter class comprised of the wealthy and powerful who would eventually come into conflict with the exploited, creating a revolutionary change. From this revolutionary change would appear a new set of exploiters and exploited, where the cycle would continue over and over until there were no classes but all were equal, creating a utopian communism where everyone enjoys the results of their hard work equally. (Taylor 2011, pg 104) Karl Marx believed that the driving factor that would enable Marxism to work is the fact that every individual played a vital role in the sustainment of the society. If one piece was missing then all pro...

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...uman flaws we have that lead to the corruption that power brings. I believe there is no perfect government; just one whose benefits outweigh the costs.

References

Cropsey, Joseph, and Strauss, 1987. History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hausman, Daniel. 2007. The Philosophy of Economics. Cambridge University Press.

"Karl Marx", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/marx/. (accessed March 3, 2014).

Marx, Karl, “Ideology and Method in Political Economy,” in The Philosophy of Economics, 2nd ed., ed. Daniel M. Hausman (New York: Cambridge UP, 1994), 119-142.

Political Realism. International Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/polreal/ (accessed March 3, 2014).

Taylor, Steven. 30-Second Politics. New York: Metro Books, 2011