Marx & The Russian Revolution

Who is Karl Marx?
Summary of Marxism
Discovery of Marxism by Lenin
Bibliography

Who is Karl Marx?

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Prussia, or modernly, Trier, Germany. He was the oldest living of his 8 other siblings. He was born to a Jewish family with rabbinical heritage, but his father had to convert to Lutheranism a few years before Karl was born in order to to continue his work in law due to local legislation prohibiting Jewish people from being a part of the elite. Growing up, Marx was teased for being Jewish even though he practiced Christianity, which may have contrubuted to his ideas about society. He later became atheist.

Marx attended the University of Bonn in 1835, majoring in the humanities but Marx’s parents re enrolled him into the University of Berlin in 1836 after a year in school because he had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly and his parents were worried about him. Here, Marx discovered the work of G.W.F Hegel. Hegel believed that everything had a place in a dialectical order of things. Dialectic means, in Hegelian terms, using a posed thesis, finding an antithesis, and using these two ideas to form a synthesis of ideas to see truth. Marx joined a group called the Young Hegelians. Marx was not put with having just an idealist structure of thought and interpretation and believed that it needed to be implemented in society rather than used to observe it. He used this form of thinking, along with theories from other philosophers, to create the basis of Marxism.

In 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, whom he had been engaged to for seven years prior. The couple then moved to Paris, where Marx met Freidrich Engels. Together, he and Engels wrote a criticism of young Hegelian beliefs, which would be their first of many collaborations in critical philosophical writing. In Paris, Marx started associating with French and German Communist workingmen, whose commitment to brotherhood he thought was unintelligent but moving. Soon, however, in 1845, the Prussian government expelled Marx and Engels from Paris and had to move to Brussels. Later, in Belgium, Marx renounced his Prussian nationality.

In Brussels, Marx and Engels worked together more and more. They discovered they both had the same views and published more and more works together. In 1847, they both left for England. Here, the League of the Just, a secret society mostly comprised of German workmen, offered Marx and Engels to join. Marx was hesitant at first, but soon joined with Engels whereupon the society changed its name to the Communist League. The Communist League wanted a manifesto for interested parties, so Marx and Engels were put to the task. They had the wherewithal to compose this, with their other works in critiquing and philosophy, so from December 1847 to Janurary 1848, Marx and Engels came up with the manuscript that would become the Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital.

Summary of Marxism

Marxism is a socioeconomic theory/system created by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels focusing on class struggle, materialism (dialectical and material,) and analysis of society and workers. It poses the idea that the worker and the individual cannot entirely be free and therefore not happy working and living in a capitalist society. It emphasizes the classes of people, the bourgeois and the proletariat. The labor of the worker (proletariat) is taken by the owner (the bourgeois.) The only economic value of the worker is how much they can give to the owner, and the owner becomes the wealthiest and most well-off because of it. They believe that if the proletariat siezed the means of production, they would be able to protect the fruits of their labor and class divisions and alienation would cease to exist and everyone would be equally well-off.

To Marx, this was not just a philosophy, but a call to action. He demanded that this would continue until someone stood up to the class of organzing workers to seize the means of production and take control of their work.

Discovery of Marxism by Lenin

6 years after Marx's death, in 1889 in college, Vladimir Lenin discovered the works of Marx and the Communist Party. He saw the Communist Party and believed them to be very intelligent people who understood society. He also believed that Marxism would not come overnight and needed to transition and have an upheaval to get anything done. This led Lenin to add his own ideas onto Marxism which would later be called Marxist-Leninism. Marxist-Leninism was the ideal that the Russian Revolutionists followed.

Karl Marx & The Russian Revolution

Who is Karl Marx?

Summary of Marxism

Discovery of Marxism by Lenin