Classical Marxism - Karl Marx

Karl Marx

For more details on this topic, see Karl Marx.

Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883, London) was an immensely influential German philosopher, political economist, and socialist revolutionary. Marx addressed a wide range of issues, including alienation and exploitation of the worker, the capitalist mode of production and historical materialism, although he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, summed up in the opening line of the introduction to the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." The influence of his ideas, already popular during his life, was given added impetus by the victory of the Russian Bolsheviks in the 1917 October Revolution, and there are few parts of the world which were not significantly touched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century.

As the American Marx scholar Hal Draper remarked, "there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike."

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Famous quotes by karl marx:

    “While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    “The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    “The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
    —Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)

    “From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical
    Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)