Karl+Marx

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Biography
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in a middle class family in Trier Germany. His parents were Jewish but later converted to Lutheranism when Marx was just six. He attended Universities in Germany, Berlin and Jena. At the age of seventeen, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn. At Bonn is where he met his wife Jenny Von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron Von Westphalen, a wealthy member of Trier Society. He moved to Paris in 1843 in order to publish a radical journal and was later banished as a dangerous revolutionary. It was in Paris where he met life long friend and associate Frederich Engels. Marx moved to Brusels in 1845 with Engels. During the first half of the 1850's Marx and his family lived in poverty in London. Marx and Jenny had four children and two more were to follow. Out of the six, three died. He lived an intense life filled with rigorous studies and sorrow. His major source of income came from Engels and Marx's weekly articles written as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. He lived in poverty for most of his days. During the last decade of his life, his health declined. The death of his eldest daughter and wife clouded the last years of his life. Marx died March 14, 1883 at the age of 65.

Quick Facts

 * Affected everyone's lives
 * He believed in a Utopian Society
 * Marx did not create communism. (it's impossible because it happened in 1917, therefore he was already dead.)
 * He was an Idealist. Later drove him to Human freedom
 * Friedrich Engles was his closest friend and collaborator

Theory behind Marx
//Premise// "The most common characteristic in human beings is that we have to work inorder to survive. Withput food or shelter (basic material) we ceast to exist."

- He states that every species in in this environment provides its needs, be it shelter or food. Humans on the other hand do not do the same, we adapt nature in our needs. - What we do is take/destroy nature to build products for human kind and make profit. - Since the begining of time there's always been a class structure inorder separate the world

//Argument no.2// In early stages of human developemnt men didn't settle down. Humans were **Nomadics** meaning always moving around and never establishing settlements. Men were not at all monogamous which resulted different sex partners and numerous amount of children. Eventually, monogamy developed at the same time so settlement. Men didn't have to carry their life from one place to another anymore. With this, settlement developement, houses were built, agriculture etc.

Forms of Class

 * A. First form of Class
 * With settlement, husbands claimed control to property and different ways to also control wife and children with rules = control of productivity in property.


 * B.** **Conquerer and Slave
 * Masters found it a lot easier to have slaves that didn't require payments, just basic food and shelter in return for doing all the work

1) Nobility/nobles (royal blood) owners of the land 2) Serfs: peasants who live and rent the land owned by the nobles.
 * C. Feudalism Class System:**

1) Bourgeosie: middle class who owned factories, capitals 2) Proletariat: exploited factory workers
 * D. Capitalism Class System**

At the time of capitalism, there were no labour laws or UNION. Kids didn't go to school, they worked. Most of the time long hours and little breaks if any. The proletariat came home to small and freezing apartments after long hours of work. According to Marx "You are what you produce" The Bourgeosie practically owns you. It's not just your labour that's being exploited but your self. Which leads to Alienation (No sense of idenity) product of labour from the assembly line process. A sense of self lost, by working repetitve task, you become a robot rather than a human being.

Super Structure

 * **1. Ideology** set of ideas, beliefs ||
 * **2. Politics, family, government, religion** social structures ||
 * **3. Classes** groups owning people: control over labour ||
 * **4. Property** private properties, materials, land etc. ||
 * **5. Nature** where we all start out ||
 * Base = the natural world. We don't live in it but part of it.**

Karl Marx attacked bourgeois political theory and its view of civil society and civilization for what he believed to be its falsely universal concepts and institutions. Marx's view: these concepts were only the ideology(sets of ideas and beliefs) of the bourgeoisie as a new ruling class, which sought to reshape society after its own image.

//Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class which obtains income from ownership or trade in capital assets, or from commercial activities such as the buying and selling of commodities and services.//

Marxism sees the proletariat (wage laborers) and bourgeoisie as directly waging an ongoing class struggle, in that capitalists exploit workers and workers try to resist exploitation. This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek employment in order to make a living. They get hired by a capitalist and work for them, producing different types of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a much higher amount of money in exchange. Thus the capitalist can earn money (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. Thus, Marxists argue that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers.

Hale, Sylvia M. 1995 Controversies in Sociology. A Canadian Introduction 2nd edition, Mississauga, Ontario: Copp Clark Webster, Frank. 2004 The Information Society Reader. New York, New York: Routledge http://www.indepthinfo.com/communist-manifesto/karl-marx.shtml accesed February 21, 2006 Friedrich Engel Eulogy to Marx: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html accessed February 21, 2006 The Marxist View: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeosie, accessed February 21, 2006
 * References**: