Analyze and Evaluate Marx, Research Paper Example

Karl Marx’s contribution to our understanding of society, according to www.historyguide,com has been enormous. His friend Engels in eulogizing him, said, “His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalistic society, and the state institutions that brought it into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was first to make conscious of its position and its needs. Engels went further to say that Marx was before all else a revolutionist.

From as early as the University of Bonn until his death, Marx impacted upon the human potential and caused much alienation between countries and their government due to the enlightenment his ideologies brought in the lives of the common man day. His personal life also suffered much alienation as he was expelled from a Germany and France.

The seeds of communism and revolution started to be sown at this university, when as a member of the Young Hegelian movement, he produced a radical critique of Christianity and by extension the established views of the existing Prussian autocracy. This action led to the destruction of any chances he had of pursuing a teaching career at the highest academic levels.

Marx embraced communism after his expulsion from his home country, and sought unify the French and radical German immigrants in France at the time. He concretized his views by writing “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” during this time, effectively sowing the seeds of a doctrine that would reorganize the world politically, economically, and spiritually, even fifty years later.

In this manuscript, he outlined a humanistic conception of communism, which reflected his Ludwig Feuerbach philosophical thinking, and a base on the contrast between the alienated natures of the labor force. His teaching has definitely affected the religious make up of the world, because those governments who embrace communism ideology, even today has spurned Christianity, as can be seen in China, Cuba, the former Soviet Empire, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and East Germany. The economics system was also divided, base on the religious beliefs, with the Christianity based countries embracing different versions of capitalism models, and the communism based ones, practicing types of co-operative based economic machinery; where the government earns the factors of production, as well as the finish products.

The work of Marx later made further inroads into the German society, when he wrote “The German Ideology”, which succinctly described how the nature of the individuals depended on the material condition of their production. This philosophy was taken to the extreme several years later, as Russia, China, and East Germany exploited the human potentials of their populations, to build up great wealth for the middle and upper class, while make the working class lives in almost abject poverty.

Engels was right in his eulogy concerning Marx being a revolutionary, because the Communist Manifesto they both wrote in 1848, caused waves of revolutions to break out in Europe. Workers embraced the ideology, and came to realize that they were being used by the aristocratic sections of the society, to generate great wealth, and are only being impoverished in the process, began to alienate them for the status quo political thinking of the day.

But how could there not be revolutions, when, after he adequately addressed aspects of the labor theory and exploitation.  He wrote,” The workers becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity, the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities, it produces itself and the workers as a commodity-and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally”. (Marx 1884)

Karl Marx’s role in the development of societal institutions that regulate the conditions of workers to this day cannot be refuted, if one looks at the International Labor Organizations, Human Rights Groups, Governments having department of labor, Amnesty International, and various other groups, established to protect workers rights. The great man may have had some of his predictions not coming to pass, especially the fall of capitalism, but without his contribution, the world would not have advanced to this level today. The revolutionist has caused great revolutions in politics, religion, economics, sociology, and other areas too numerous to mention, and he has left the world far more enlightened than when he came.

Reference

The History Guide Lectures on Modern Intellectual History, www.historyguide.com, 04/23/10