KarlMarx was a German philosopher, sociologist, economist, journalist and political theorist. with Friedrich Engels, elaborated a theorypolitics that supported the call socialism scientific. His contributions to Contemporary Philosophy include, in addition to social and economic analysis, a new concept of dialectic, based on the material production of humanity.
Its dialectical concept, called dialectical historical materialism, provides a new vision for social and scientific analysis about the history of society. By analyzing the material production of Europe in the 19th century, Marx identified the striking inequality and the exploration from a class that owns the means of production (bourgeoisie) over the exploited class (proletariat), which profoundly marked his career.
Biography
Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the city of Tréveris, then territory of the Prussia. Despite being one of the biggest critics of capitalism and from the division of social classes, he was born within a
German upper class family. His father was a successful lawyer and government advisor. Marx studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm Lyceum, having an early education consistent with his social class.At the age of seventeen, Marx entered the law course at the University of Bonn, following in his father's footsteps. However, the young university student found the parties and the bohemian life. In order to cut his son's way of life, Heinrich Marx, his father, transferred him to the University of Berlin. There, the challenger and challenger Marx met the philosophy course, the field of study in which he would graduate.
At the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Berlin, Marx was a student and disciple of the great German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a person who influenced his theoretical production, mainly with the concept of dialectics. In his years in Berlin, Marx proved to be a great critic of governments and rulers, with inclinations towards social criticism.
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At the age of 23, Marx defended his thesis in Philosophy, obtaining the doctor's title, which allowed him to enter an academic career. However, because of his avid criticism of the Prussian government, the philosopher was vetoed in universities, which forced him to work as a journalist. A little more than a year after Marx joined the editorial staff of a Prussian newspaper, with a socialist nature, the censors closed the publication.
In the same year that Marx lost his job at the newspaper, 1843, got married in secret with Jenny von Westphalen. In the same year he moved to Paris, having contact with the socialist ideals that strongly influenced his intellectual production.
The couple Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen had sevensons and four of them died in their childhood, due to the precarious situation in which they lived for a long time, caused by lack of money. With the refusal of jobs for Marx and his careerunstable in journalism, the couple lived for a long time only on parts they received from their parents' inheritance.
Marx's radical positions bequeathed him several expulsions from Prussian, German and French territories, being expelled from Cologne, Germany, in 1848. Also in 1848 he published the ManifestCommunist, with Engels, which started the Marxist work, which composed what we now call scientific socialism. Marx settled in England in 1849. From 1843 until the end of his life, Marx survived on the remains of inheritances, the help of Friedrich Engels and articles he occasionally wrote for newspapers.
From his stay in London, the philosopher began to develop his most important work, The capital, as well as books that became references for studies in sociology, economics and socialism. the philosopher died in the year of 1883, two years after his wife's death, due to respiratory complications caused by excessive tobacco use.
Read too: Social inequality – a concept widely discussed by Marx
Karl Marx Theory
Marx developed a dense and extensive work that encompasses important philosophical, economic and historical concepts, as well as paving the way for an expansion of the sociological method. However, the philosopher was best known for his theory of analysis and social criticism, which recognized a division of social classes and the exploitation of a privileged class that held the means of production over a dominated class.
The set of his important concepts make up what Marx called dialectical historical materialism, a method of social and historical analysis based on class struggle.
Right at the beginning of the ManifestCommunist, Marx and Engels claim that "the history of all societies existing today is the history of class struggles|1|". This iconic phrase represents the heart of what the Marxism: the recognition that different social classes are crossed by relations of domination.
Within the general Marxist theory, some concepts stand out for their broad importance within the Marxist system itself. Are they:
Infrastructure: based on economics and its centrality in the productive sphere, which is the main composer axis of historical materialism. Infrastructure involves the division of labor, production and its relationships, purchase, trade, etc.
Superstructure: is a set of institutions and norms that maintain the ideology social and exploitation logic working. Elements of the superstructure are the State, laws, religion and culture.
added value: is the difference between the price of raw material and production of a commodity and the price of labor and the cost of the means of production of the same commodity.
Alienation: there is an evident separation between the worker and the fruit of his labor. The added value, which in the manufactured production processes benefited the artisans, in the production process capitalist, benefits the owner of the means of production and deprives workers of the ability to recognize themselves in their own work.
Bourgeoisie: is the class that owns the means of production.
Proletariat: it is the working class.
After verifying the domination process, Marx presented as a possible solution to proletariat revolution, which would be a revolt of the working class that would become aware of its class, its strength and the injustices experienced. This revolution would overthrow the state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, whose mission would end private property and undermine, little by little, the difference of Social classes. The end of this would supposedly be the communism, that is, the perfect form of socialism, according to the theorist.
Karl Marx and Sociology
Marx's contributions to History, to Philosophy and the formulation of a new mode of social analysis, focused on criticism of capitalism, were fundamental to the dissemination of sociology and to sustain a more sociological method. solid. THE critical theory of capitalism founded by Marx and Engels clarified some factors that Durkheim's analysis (Along with Karl Marx and Max Weber, Durkheim composes the triad of classical thinkers in sociology) on industrial capitalist societies does not address.
In Marx's youth, sociology had not yet emerged as a methodical and academic science, as he was responsible for formulating the methodsociological it was the french Emile Durkheim. However, the concepts present in Marx's work, not only those relating to Marxist theory or socialism, left sociologists with subsequent answers about a capitalist logic of a privilege system, in which one class overlaps the other and on the internal functioning of the market and production.
Know more: Auguste Comte, another exponent of 19th century Philosophy
Works by Karl Marx
The main works by Karl Marx, produced for the publication, are:
Communist Party Manifesto: written with four hands, with Friedrich Engels, the manifesto founded a new socialist-communist thought.
The German Ideology: one of Marx's most important works. This book, written and published between 1845 and 1846, brings out a first precise formulation of the concept of materialism. dialectical history, demonstrating that Marx's dialectical thesis took a totally different path from that of his teacher, Hegel. By the way, Marx's book is written almost entirely to criticize Hegel and the German idealists, who distanced themselves from practice and material life, which is the only concrete possibility of a revolution.
Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy: in this writing, Marx makes a kind of "laying the ground" for the magnificent work that would come a few years later. In this work, Marx speaks of some notions related to value, currency and merchandise.
The capital
Regarded as the densest and most complete Marxist production, The capital it is the culmination of the philosopher's production and has consecrated his social theory on the division of social classes, the bourgeoisie and the exploitation of labor. In this work, Marx makes a kind of genealogy of capitalism and studies the contradictions generated by this system. According to the philosopher, capitalism would be overthrown by its contradictions, taken over by the working class and replaced by communism.
Sentences
"Until now philosophers are concerned with interpreting the world in various ways. What matters is to transform it."
"Theoretical oppositions can only be resolved in a practical way, by the practical energy of man. Its solution is by no means an exclusive task of knowledge, but a real life task which philosophy could not solve because it only recognizes it as a purely theoretical task."
"Religion is the opium of the people."
"The history of all societies in existence today is the history of class struggles."
Note
|1| ENGELS, F.; MARX, K.;. Communist Manifesto. Trans. Alvaro Pina. Introduction and organization by Oswaldo Coggiola. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2002, p. 40.
by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor
