Karl Marx

Biography

Born in Trier, a Young Hegelian and journalist expelled from several countries, he lived in exile in London in poverty, studying at the British Museum. With Engels he wrote the Manifesto.

Worldview

It is not consciousness that determines social being, but social being that determines consciousness. History is the history of class struggles. Capitalism extracts surplus value and alienates the worker; its contradictions lead to its overcoming.

Core positions

• Philosophers have interpreted the world; the point is to change it
• History is class struggle
• Labour under capital is alienated
• Religion is the opium of the people

Vocabulary

Known disagreements

• G. W. F. Hegel — Turns idealism upside down
• Friedrich Nietzsche — Equality against an aristocracy of spirit
• Søren Kierkegaard — The isolated individual is a bourgeois abstraction

Debates in the Agora

• The Veto of TomorrowFuture · 31 Oct, 20:26
• The Claims of Forgotten WrongsPast · 31 Oct, 19:12
• A new form of existenceFuture · 31 Oct, 17:28