person1818-1883

Karl Marx

Disciplines:

Summary

German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary who developed historical materialism — the base-superstructure thesis — the labor theory of value, alienation, and the theory of class struggle as the driver of history.

Core Contribution

Historical materialism: the mode of production determines the social superstructure; history is the history of class struggle. Alienation: under capitalism, workers are alienated from their product, their labor activity, their species-being, and each other. Surplus value: profit is extracted unpaid labor time. The proletariat is the universal class whose liberation requires abolishing class society.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Spent decades in the British Museum reading room working on Capital — a text so demanding and unfinished that he published only one volume in his lifetime and Engels assembled the rest from notes.
Argued that religion is the opium of the people — not a criticism but a description: it is the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless world — before explaining why the world must be changed rather than consoled.
Predicted the progressive immiseration of the proletariat as capitalism developed — a prediction falsified by the welfare state, which Marxists have been explaining away ever since.

Notable Works & Achievements

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The Communist Manifesto

Capital Vol. 1

The German Ideology

Grundrisse

Historical Influences

G.W.F. Hegel Adam Smith David Ricardo Ludwig Feuerbach

Intellectual Lineage

German Idealism British Political Economy French Socialism

Contemporaries & Peers

Friedrich Engels Charles Darwin John Stuart Mill

Minds Influenced

Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin Georg Lukács Theodor Adorno Louis Althusser

Intellectual Posterity

Marxism Historical Materialism Alienation Theory Western Marxism Critical Theory

Discussing

Karl Marx

Ask anything about Karl Marx — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1818-1883

Karl Marx

Disciplines:

economics

political philosophy

philosophy/philosophy of history

sociology/social theory

Summary

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Spent decades in the British Museum reading room working on Capital — a text so demanding and unfinished that he published only one volume in his lifetime and Engels assembled the rest from notes.
Argued that religion is the opium of the people — not a criticism but a description: it is the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless world — before explaining why the world must be changed rather than consoled.
Predicted the progressive immiseration of the proletariat as capitalism developed — a prediction falsified by the welfare state, which Marxists have been explaining away ever since.

Notable Works & Achievements

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The Communist Manifesto

Capital Vol. 1

The German Ideology

Grundrisse

Historical Influences

G.W.F. Hegel Adam Smith David Ricardo Ludwig Feuerbach

Intellectual Lineage

German Idealism British Political Economy French Socialism

Contemporaries & Peers

Friedrich Engels Charles Darwin John Stuart Mill

Minds Influenced

Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin Georg Lukács Theodor Adorno Louis Althusser

Intellectual Posterity

Marxism Historical Materialism Alienation Theory Western Marxism Critical Theory

Discussing

Karl Marx

Ask anything about Karl Marx — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.