Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, and revolutionary socialist, who developed the socio-political theory of Marxism. His Marxist ideas played a significant role in the development of modern social science and also in the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867-1894), many of which were co-written with his friend, the fellow German revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels.
Born into a wealthy middle class family in Triers, Marx went on to study at both the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. Following the completion of his studies, he became a journalist, writing for a radical newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, where he began to use Hegelian concepts of dialectical materialism to influence his ideas on socialism. Moving to Paris, France in 1843, he began writing for other radical newspapers, the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher and Vorwärts!, as well as writing a series of books, several of which were co-written with Engels. Exiled to Brussels in Belgium in 1845, he became a leading figure of the Communist League, before moving to London, England in 1849, where, living in poverty, he proceeded to continue writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society.
Marx_s widespread influence revolves around his ethical message; a "morally empowering language of critique" against the dominant capitalist society. Marx predicted that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism would, in its turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism. This would emerge after a transitional period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat": a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers_ democracy". Marx also argued that socio-economic change occurred through organized revolutionary action, and that both social theorists and underprivileged people should act to carry it out.
While Marx remained a relatively obscure figure in his own lifetime, his ideas and the ideology of Marxism began to exert a major influence on workers_ movements shortly after his death. This influence gained added impetus with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian October Revolution in 1917, and few parts of the world remained significantly untouched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century. Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science. In 1999, a BBC poll revealed that Marx had been voted the "thinker of the millennium" by people from around the world. (from Wiki)
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