Marx

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher, economist, and political theorist whose work on capitalism, history, and class struggle became the most politically consequential philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Life

Born in Trier to a Jewish family (his father converted to Lutheranism), Marx studied law and philosophy, writing a doctoral thesis on Aristotle and Epicurus. As a journalist he was expelled from Prussia, France, and Belgium and settled permanently in London in 1849, supported by his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels. He spent decades in the British Museum reading room researching Capital. He died in London in 1883, attended by only a handful of people. Engels predicted correctly that his name would "endure through the ages."

Historical Materialism

Marx's foundational philosophical claim — developed in explicit dialogue with Hegel:

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."

Whereas Hegel saw history as the self-development of Idea/Spirit, Marx "inverted" Hegel: it is material conditions — how humans produce their means of subsistence — that determine ideas, laws, politics, religion, and culture.

The base (economic relations and forces of production) determines the superstructure (law, politics, philosophy, religion). This is historical materialism.

Dialectics and History

Marx retained Hegel's Dialectics but applied it materialistically. History unfolds through the contradiction between productive forces (technology, labor) and relations of production (property, class structures):

Primitive Communism → Slave Society → Feudalism → Capitalism → Communism

Each stage contains contradictions that generate the next. Capitalism's contradiction: it requires workers (proletariat) who produce all value but are paid only survival wages, while capitalists (bourgeoisie) extract surplus value (profit).

Alienation

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), drawing on Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic and Rousseau's critique of civilization, Marx analyzed alienation under capitalism:

Workers are alienated from the product of their labor (it belongs to the capitalist)
Workers are alienated from the activity of labor (it is not self-expression but drudgery)
Workers are alienated from their species-being (humans are naturally creative; wage labor perverts this)
Workers are alienated from other people (competition replaces community)

Political Theory

Marx's Political Philosophy is revolutionary:

The state is not neutral — it is an instrument of class domination
Law, religion, and ideology serve ruling-class interests ("religion is the opium of the people")
The working class (proletariat) must seize political power in revolution
The eventual goal is a communist society — "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" — in which the state withers away

Critique of Capitalism

In Capital (vol. 1, 1867), Marx analyzed capitalism through:

Labor theory of value — the value of commodities is determined by socially necessary labor time
Surplus value — the source of profit; workers produce more value than they receive as wages
Commodity fetishism — social relations between people appear as relations between things
Tendency of the rate of profit to fall — capitalism's internal crisis mechanism

Influence

The influence of Marx is staggering — for better and worse:

Communist movements and revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba, and elsewhere claimed Marxist foundations
20th-century critical theory (Frankfurt School), Phenomenology, and Existentialism all engaged deeply with Marx
Contemporary debates about inequality, labor, and capitalism still draw on Marxist categories
Hegel's dialectical method was revived through its Marxist reception

Hegel — whose idealism Marx inverted
Dialectics — the logical method Marx adapted materialistically
Political Philosophy — the state as class instrument; revolution
Ethics — Marx's critique of ideology and "bourgeois morality"
Rousseau — precursor on alienation, property, and inequality
Locke — whose defense of property Marx attacked
Existentialism — which engaged with Marx's account of alienation
Consciousness — ideology and false consciousness