Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in the city of Trier, Germany. He was an economist, philosopher, and revulotionist. His family was Jewish but later they turned into Protestants in 1824 to avoid anti-semitic laws. This was one of the reasons he decided to reject religion from his youth and become atheist. His father was a lawyer who came from a Rabbi family. Marx started studying philosophy at Bonn at the age of 17. There he was under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich von Hegel. He also became engaged t Jenny von Westphalen. A year later, Marx was moved by his father to the University of Belin, where he studied Hegelianism.

After graduating from university, Marx moved to Bonn in order to become a professor but the policies of the government made him abandon his idea of working in an academic career. In 1841, Marx received his doctorate in philosophy. A year later, he became the editor of a liberal democratic newspaper where he wrote mostly social and economic issues. In 1849, he moved to London where he decided to spend the rest of his life, but for a long time his family lived in poverty. Marx overcome this hard time and published his most important work, “Das Kapital”. He spent his last years depressed by the death of his wife and daughter and died on March 14, 1883.

Contributions:

One of the most important contributions of Karl Marx is his economic theory. It is an application of his theory of history to the capitalist economy. While other economists focused on the equilibrium of economy, he focused on the dynamic process of change. Paul M. Sweezy suggested that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and that capitalist economics is the economics of socialism. This means that his theory of economic helps to understand the forces that the market produces, while the standard classical analysis can be useful in organizing and operating a socialist economy.

His work called “Das Kapital” where he presents a systematic account of the nature, development, and future of the capitalist system. He also tries to show he ways that workers are exploited by capitalist mode of production. He explains that the reason why capitalists are able to make a profit is that they only pay workers what it takes to keep them functional, while the workers produce more work than what it’s necessary. Like this is how the workers are exploited. The capitalists can do this since they have more power and can control the production.

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