MARX was a German, though of Jewish origin. While his father was a Jew, his mother was Hungarian. He was from a middle class background, born on May 2nd, 1818, in Trier, Rhineland of Prussia which later became Germany.
Initially, he was sent to study law in the University of Bonn, Germany, but he always involved in unionism on campus which brought him into perpetual conflict with the University authorities. This led to his being moved to the University of Berlin, where he abandoned law to study English and Italian classes.
At age 18, Marx became one of the leading young Hegelians in Berlin, a club or forum of students that believed in the philosophy of Hegel. He got married to his lover, Jenny, from an aristocratic background and had seven children, even though many of the children died as a result of malnutrition.
As a young Hegelian, the view of Marx about state, society and humans generally differs from his perception as an adult.
That is why in Marxist philosophy, distinction were made about two variants of his philosophy, that is the young Marx of Hegelian character, and the adult Marx.
As a young Hegelian, Marx believed that state is where the dignity of humans can be attained and that the ultimate happiness of humans can be guaranteed by the state. In other words, without state and government, no human being can in all sincerity achieve happiness.
However, there were two major events that brought about drastic and dramatic change of orientation of Marx towards the state.
1. The plight of the Moselle wine grower.
2. Anti-wood theft law by the Rhineland assembly.
1. In the Rhineland region, a law was passed by the state that placed an embargo on the importation of wine, in the name of encouraging local production.
The local peasants and wine growers soon got wealthy and caused an outrage between the elite who thought that the law was going to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.
The state then removed the law which convinced Marx that the state does not really have the masses at heart, only the bourgeoisie.
This made Marx to posit that state is a clog in the wheel of the happiness of the citizens and that if the people must be happy, the state must be removed.
The Central theme of Marxist and Leninist thoughts.
Central to the theory of Marxism and Leninism, is the advocacy of freedom and liberty for the working class people against the oppression, intimidation, harassment, exploitation and pauperisation of the commoners by those who controls the means of production and wield the instrument of state power for parochial and class interest, rather than the advancement of interest of the people.
Although, there were other socialist writers before Marx, like Fabians, however, Marx became the focal point of discussion in the communist cycle because he was the first to undertake a scientific interrogation and analysis of societal evolution, bearing in mind the origin and nature of state and the stratification of class that led to eventual class struggle between two dominant forces in each succeeding epoch of human society.
This led Marx to identify 5stages of human society namely,
1. Communalism
2. Slavery
3. Feudalism
4. Capitalism
5. Communism, via socialism
To explain these five epochs, Marx adopted historical dialectical materialism to emphasize the point that historically, one cannot understand the present without falling back on history, and that in understanding the history, evidence indicates that human existence is determined by material wealth available to him or her which depicts the notion of materialism.
On materialism, he insisted that before man pursue politics, art, music, religion, love, he must first accomplish certain materialistic achievements which include shelter, clothing and food.
MARXIST Works, thoughts and teachings.
1. On freedom of the Press.
2. Critique of Hegels philosophy of rights.
3. Condition of the working class in England.
4. The poverty of philosophy
5. Wage, labor and capital *
6. The class struggle in France, 1848-1850
7. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte *
8. Contribution to critique of political economy.
9. Theories of surplus value.
10. Das kapital vol. 1, 2 and 3.
11. Communist manifesto
Marxist scholars, who subscribed to Karl Marx work and ideology.
-Frederick Engels
-V.I. Lenin
-Frantz Fanon
-Ernesto Cheguevara (Argentine socialist)
-Walter Rodney
-Claude Ake (his book, Political Economy of Africa)
-Andre-Gunder Frank
-Samir Amin
-Amilkar Cabran
-Samora Mashelle (First Mozambican president)
-Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana
-Mao Tsedung of China
-Rosa Luxemburg
-Lafargue
-Henry Futado Cadozo
-Kautsky
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