Karl Marx/IntroductionToTheory

This resource gives information on Karl Marx's theory.

Karl Marx's theory covers a lot of different terrains. The most important are:

• the Critique of Political Economy
• the Materialist view on history ("historical materialism")

Foundations

The foundations of Marx's theory can in a very rough way be divided in three parts:

• the dialectics of Hegel
• French socialism
• English political economy

Marx started his career as a student of philosophy in Berlin in 1836. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had died a few years before, and his ideas had become very influential in Berlin. Although Marx was critical about the metaphysical content of Hegel's theory, he was deeply influenced by his dialectical method. Many of his works, earlier and later, show fundamental features of Hegel's way of analyzing.

-> see: Marx's dialectical method.

In 1843 Marx moved to Paris and became interested in the views of French socialist radicals like St. Simon and Charles Fourier. He also fundamentally critized the thoughts of the French anarchist Proudhon. His contacts with radical socialists in Germany, France, Belgium and England, and his friendship with Friedrich Engels, led to the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

-> see: Scientific socialism.

In 1850 Marx moved to London, and from then on was mainly focused on studying English political economists, like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. This finally led to the publication, in 1867, of the first volume of Das Kapital.

Later volumes of this work were published by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky.

-> see: Marx's critique of Political Economy.