The Father of Communism
Karl Marx introduces scientific communism to the world
By: Blui Newman
Called one of the most influential
minds of the 19th century, but also
ignored by many of the scholars of
his time, Karl Marx was quite
different than the others, advanced.
Karl Marx was born in the year of
1818 in a town called Trier, near
the German Rhineland. His family
was moderately well off and his
father was a lawyer. After a job
opportunity that required his father
to convert to Christianity, Karl Marx
went from being Jewish to
Christian. When it was time to go to
college, he decided to study law in
Bonn and Berlin. While in Berlin
one person in particular really
influenced him, his name was
Bruno Bauer. Bruno taught Marx
the writings of Hegel and also
contributed as the turning point of
when Marx was beginning to be
exposed to radical views and
atheism. Once finished with law,
Marx wanted a job as a university
lecturer, but Bruno Bauer, the man
who promised him help for a job,
was fired himself for his open
atheist beliefs. This in turn caused
Marx to turn to journalism. He
wrote often about politics and social
issues. Because of his job as a
journalist he found himself
beginning to consider communist
theory. Because of his controversial
writing and his desires to express
himself he found himself moving to
Cologne just so that his writing was
accepted. He became the editor of a
radical newspaper named The
Rhenish Gazette. While working
here he met a man called Moses
Hess, one of the first Marx had met
to call himself a “Socialist”. He
began attending socialist meetings
led by Hess where they explained
how socialism would benefit the
working class of Germany. The
Rhenish Gazette began to produce
too many articles that criticized the
government so the Prussian
authorities banned the newspaper.
Once this occurred Karl Marx
decided to move to Paris where he
met his best friend and the most
important person in his life,
Frederick Engels. Frederick Engels
came from a wealthy family from
Manchester where his father owned
a factory. In Paris many things
changed for Marx. For one, he
started writing for a new political
journal named the Franco-German
Annals. He also began mixing much
more with the working class and
noticed how poor and exploited they
were. This drove him to write many
controversial articles, one where he
described himself for the first time
as a communist. He also said that
one day the working class would be
the emancipators of society.
Immediately after Its release,
Germany banned it and many
countries were offended. This
angered Marx quite a bit, he wanted
Germany to do something about the
problems. In 1844, that same year,
he wrote the Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts. In this
work he developed ideas on the
concept of alienation. He identified
three types of alienation in a
capitalist world. One was that the
workers were being alienated from
the products they are producing
everyday. Two the workers are
alienated from themselves because
they can’t get in touch with
themselves until they are finished
working. The third was that people
were being alienated from each
other because of the competitive
spirit surrounding capitalism. He
said that the perfect solution for this
was communism and that it would
enable the fulfillment of
“potentialities as a human”. After
writing this he decided to partner up
with Engels and write The Holy
Family but the pressure that
Prussian authorities applied on
France was too large. Before they
finished the article, they were
deported from France so they went
to Brussels, Belgium. Here Engels
supported Marx financially and also
influenced his writing as well. Many
of Marx’s works were never
published in his lifetime because no
one would do it. This included The
German Ideology. In 1846 Marx set
up a Communist Correspondence
Committee. It was made to link
together socialist leaders living in
different parts of Europe. Influenced
by Marx’s ideas, socialists held a
huge conference in London where
they formed a new organization
called the Communist League.
Marx formed a branch in Brussels.
They all decided that the aim of this
organization was to overthrow the
bourgeoisie, the domination of the
proletariat, and the establishment
of a new society without classes and
without private property. Once he
returned to Brussels from the
conference in London, his primary
objective was to finish The
Communist Manifesto. This was
one of his most important pieces of
work. He argued that the social
classes were very alike but had
different interests. He said that
down the road the conflicts between
the classes would lead to
revolutionary war where the
proletariat would triumph. It was
published in February 1848. One
month later he was excelled from
Belgium. This made him move back
to Cologne to establish a radical
newspaper named The New
Rhenish Gazette. They used this
newspaper to encourage the
revolutionary atmosphere they saw
in Paris, in Germany. They
published reports of revolutionary
activity all over Europe. Marx and
Engels were finally beginning to
achieve what they wanted and it
seemed pretty exiting. Not until later
that year did they realize that there
was not much hope for revolution in
Europe after revolts were crushed in
many places including Austria and
Poland. Marx’s goal of making
people push for revolution and
change was likely to fail and it
affected him greatly. Marx is viewed
today as one of the most influential
visionaries of our time. Even after
seeing many revolutions failed he
did not stop writing about it, he
lived through various years of
poverty to let people know what they
should do and how our system was
alienating others. I think that in the
future maybe the entire world will
follow what Marx preached, he is a
man filled with perserverence. Marx
can be confidently credited for
developing most of the socialist and
communist ideas out there. Karl
Marx has left his fingerprint in
society and it will most likely never
leave.