A High School Obit

The following is a high school project for Social Studies 30AP. The assignment asked students to write an obiturary for a famed and influential social, political, or philosophical thinker. I chose Marx.

Marx, Karl (1818 -1883) was a German born philosopher whose work had a lasting impact on the world. Born in Saxony (formerly of Prussia), he would go on to study law and philosophy in Prussia. He would find himself exiled from Prussia for his critical views about capitalism. Marx would have his most productive period while living in London, England, where the effects of the Industrial Revolution were most evident. Marx studied and observed the consequences of increased industrialization, especially its effect on the working class. He concluded that capitalist society was invariably unjust.

Marx stood firm with this belief. In response to capitalism, he would attempt to develop his own socio-economic theory, which has become known as Marxist theory. In his famed collaboration with Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, he would outline his basic objections to capitalist society, as well as alluding to the possiblity for redemptive triumph for the proletariat. This possibility, however, has often been seen as a historical inevitability when capitalist society is overwhelmed by its own contradictions, i.e. an obscene consolidation of wealth among those who possess a monopoly over the means of production. Marx also condemned the notion of private property, the indiscriminate exploitations of workers, and the parochial desires of profit-seekers, those who own the means of production. He ends the Manifesto with a call to workers of the world to unite and throw off their chains of oppression.

Marx's theory of revolution may be seen as a basic call for armed resistance against a corrupt society. Revolution, at least according to Marx and Engels, was to be an inevitable necessity for transforming the condition of proletarians. In their opinion, revolution must be able to to create a condition where any reversion to former habits (capitalism, individual and private profit seeking) was no longer a viable option. Theoretically, following the revolution, the proletarian class would install its own government and begin a transition to a utopian socialism. This particular rule of the proletariat has been called the "dictatorship of the proletariat". The dictatorship of the proletariat is often defined by a centrally planned economy, economic equality, and a gradual conversion to a classless society. The final culmination of this Marxist vision would be an anarchist classless society in which all lived equally and in a state of relative peace.

Karl Marx's life could be summarised as follows. He was a staunch critic of capitalism, deriving incisive insights about the relations between state, society, and the individual person. He was very much a product of his time, as a self-fashioned friend of the proletariat. The calmitious shock of a rapid urbanization on European culture (both in England and on the Continent) left most people confused, unsure, displaced, and in search for meaning in spite of rapidly bleak conditions. Was Marx simply a social critic? Perhaps, a true partner of the proletariat? Or was he merely a sympathetic reader of rapidly crumbling sites of modern society? In short, Marx was a man who had felt a deep compassion for the poor and working classes, and attempted to formulate a theory or, more accurately, a narrative of history that provides the story of redemption for the chosen (class), the proletariat. The intentions behind his actions, however, cannot be judged or comprehended by history.

In the century and more following Marx's passing, his ideas have been used, manipulated, misunderstood, appropriated, and outright dismissed. As a result, most of his ideas have become diluted in service of other sometimes brilliant but often harebrained theories. Marx, by providing a narrative rather biblical in its scope, has found a place as mere figurehead, a symbol, an object, or, in rather fanatical cases, an almost deified figure. Karl Marx, unwittingly or not, synthesized religion with secularism and established his ideas as doctrine. This is the mixed, some would say bittersweet, legacy that he leaves behind.