Biography of Karl Marx | His analysis of capitalism inspired crowd of revolutionary movements

His analysis of capitalism inspired crowd of revolutionary movements that marked the social and political history of the 20th century.

The gradual and already almost evident failure of so-called practical applications of their political ideas and economic, must not overshadow the likes of Karl Marx as a revolutionary thinker, whose work in the socio-economic sciences meant a shift similar to that produced by Freud in psychology or Einstein in physics. Crystallization and his proposed brilliant intellectual dogmatization has had a price that history will judge and he had not endorsed. With Marx, political ethics is no longer an infused science and economic doctrine a veiled defense of particular interests. After it, the international community has no rational excuses to not go forward towards justice and equality from the scientific analysis of the facts, their relationships, causes and consequences.

Karl Marx was born in the present Prussian Rhineland Germany, in the city of Trier (formerly Treves, in Spanish Trier) 5 may 1818. He was one of seven children of the Jewish lawyer Heinrich Marx and his Dutch wife Henrietta Pressburg. The father was a man inclined to illustration and moderately liberal ideas, devoted to Kant and Voltaire. Therefore, Karl had a normal childhood in the cultured bourgeoisie of his time, and attended school and attended high school in his hometown.

Karl Marx

In October 1835, aged seventeen, he enrolled in the courses of Humanities of the University of Bonn. He spent there only a year, where he studied Greek and history and led a hectic student life, including a duel and a day of black hole by alcoholism and disorders (it was the only time that the founder of scientific communism was in prison). The University environment in Bonn was rebellious and politicized, so Karl became a member of a circle where he discussed politics and poetry, and became President of the Club of taverns, who had other purposes. Despite so many activities, suddenly he decided to move on to the University of Berlin, which entered the following year, also in October.

In Berlin, he said to study law and philosophy, without abandoning his penchant for history. He found many friends and a girlfriend, Jenny von Westphalen, young intelligent and attractive twenty-two-year-old (four more than Karl Marx), belonging to a family of officials of recent nobility, who ever would swallow to the «will» Jenny intellectual and Jew.

A young Hegelian

Georg W. F. Hegel had just died and the Berlin University environment was fervently Hegelian, although each group or student Cenacle interpreted the ideas of the creator of the dialectic in his own way. The young Marx was immersed in these discussions, that led him to a deep depression and the first setback of his fragile health. Pledge to its intellectual rigor, agreed to join «a conception that hated» (according to letter to his father in November 1837) and joined the Group of followers of the young Professor Bruno Bauer, which held ideas more progressive and democratic the work of Hegel and the questioning of the formal and mathematical thinking.

Birthplace of Marx

Bauer was expelled from the University for "radical" in 1839, but the young Hegelian already were Republicans on the left using the philosophy and dialectics as a critical instrument of rigid Prussian society in which they lived. However, Marx and his companions were still idealistic and very romantic, trusting that the society would change due to the development of culture and education. This position was not shared by journalist Adolph Rutemberg, the most intimate friend of Karl at that time, urging it to know the dismal reality of the workers and the needy.

At the behest of his friends with Jenny, in April 1841 presented a brilliant doctoral thesis that contrasted the philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus, including the then famous sentence: "criticism is also theory," which earned a doctorate in philosophy when he had not even met twenty-three years. Not would go far beyond their academic achievement. At the beginning of the following year he joined an industrial publication founded by the more progressive forces in Cologne, then capital of Prussia.

As editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland Gazette), Marx took contact with social realities and the crudely classist nature of the Prussian legislation. Appointed again director of the magazine in October 1842, his parliamentary Chronicles from the Rhenish diet denounced the State as guardian and defender of the interests of employers and expressed his radical interpretation of Hegelian thought, while the State was not fulfilling its essential role as the ethical conduct of human specificity.

His work as a political journalist led him to take cognizance of labor movements in France and England, especially by the Chronicles of Heine from Paris and Lyon, and the ideas of the Utopian socialism maintained by Fourier, Owen, Saint Simon and Weitlig. For a time he was strongly influenced by the thought of Ludwig von Feuerbach, disciple of Hegel which developed what is often summed up as an "atheistic humanism". Marx began to try to marry the Hegelian dialectic that materialism without reaching arise still nothing which could be called class struggle. Justified in its articles the European proletarian claims such as 'the kind that until now has possessed nothing' rebellion, a circumstantial and natural phenomenon, motivated by the insensitivity of the dominant estate, which was not properly fulfilling its leadership role. He even openly criticized the ideas of utopian communism by their class bias, leaving aside the objective "understandings" of reality. Ultimately he continued defending the State comprehensive humanist of Hegel, opposite the 'State of craftsmen' who, in his opinion, they conducive to the protocomunistas.

Prussian censorship seriously pressed against the editors of the Rheinische Zeitung and Marx was forced to resign. He did not want to return to the academic career because of the rigid ideological control implemented by the Government in the University. After seven years of dating, married to Jenny in June 1843, and both joined the German political emigration that went to Paris. There he meet the cream of Europe's youth revolutionary, as Heine, Borne, Proudhon and, above all, Friedrich Engels.

The Communist Manifesto

Marx continued to work on the basis of abstract humanism of Feuerbach, who criticized religion and speculative philosophy. For his part, Engels convinced him of the importance of deepening the economic studies. Next to the Hegelian Arnold Ruge published in 1844 the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher (Yearbook Germanfrench), which included two extensive articles of Marx: 'The Jewish question' and 'philosophy Hegel law"where he wrote the famous assertion:"religion is the opium of the people"(metaphor of highly topical, as England had just invade China in the so-called 'opium war'). He also worked at that time in some manuscripts economicofilosoficos, who left in draft and not published during his lifetime. In them is especially reflected the moment of transition that crossed their thinking, and the process of what he would call «mixture» between the critical analysis of ideas and the study and interpretation of real data.

Marx and Engels

The pressure of Prussia on the Guizot Government did Karl Marx to leave Paris. On February 5, 1845 he settled in Brussels, where would pass two years of fruitful work in collaboration with Engels. Was the latter in that period when they carried out the first formulation of dialectical materialism and wrote the sagrada familia, the German ideology and poverty of philosophy, questioning the book's philosophy of poverty Proudhon.

In 1847 Marx came to London and made contact with a secret society in formation, the League of the righteous, composed mainly by emigrated German craftsmen, who asked him to write its statutes. Engels related English left-wing workers, and both worked from December until January 1848 in the founding Charter of the League, which was published as a Communist Manifesto. The Declaration begins with a sentence that became famous: "the history of every society that has existed so far, is the history of class struggle". And among its considerations stated that the productive forces are in constant tension with «relations of production, with the relations of property, which are the conditions of life of the bourgeoisie and its domain».

According to Engels later wrote, it was in this period when it produced the tipping point concept that exceeded Feuerbach, from «the cult of the abstract man» to the science of real men and their historical evolution. Then appeared the idea of the «box» composed of institutions and ideological formations, opposite the Verhältnisse (German word meaning both conditions and relations) production and appropriation of the social product.

At that time a series of revolutions popular chain that affected France, Italy and Austria, with social impact in Germany and England broke out in Europe. Marx was invited to Paris by the interim Government and objected vehemently to the «liberation» expedition on Germany proposed by the poet Georg Herwegh. This earned him a great unpopularity among revolutionaries, while he and Engels spent in April 1848 to Germany to work with the democratic forces. The proposal of Marx was an Alliance of workers with the progressive bourgeoisie, which would lead to a frontal confrontation with labor leaders.

Marx was raised in Cologne the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was short-lived due to the repressive counterattack of the Prussian government. In its latest issue, dramatically printed in red ink, the magazine belatedly summoned to armed resistance. In 1849, before the failure of the revolution, Marx returned to Paris, where he was again expelled. He went to London where he would live the rest of his days. Circumstantial disenchantment with regard to political activism and its rejection of the utopian radicalism of some colleagues, led him to dissolve the League of Communists in 1850.

The brain of the international

The first time in London was hard for Karl Marx, immersed in poverty, plagued by ill-health, and stalked by the creditors. The family survived six years in two miserable rooms in Soho, thanks to subsidies that sent Engels from the factory from his father in Manchester, where he worked as an accountant. They also collaborated to their livelihood Wilhelm Wolff, friend of Karl and sporadic shipments of relatives of Jenny. Two of the four children of the Marx died in those years of hardship and suffering.

At the end of 1851 New York Tribune appointed him correspondent, which eased in part their economic situation and much dignity. In eleven years of collaboration, Marx wrote for this newspaper over five hundred articles and editorials, a third of them with Engels. At this stage of his intellectual work began to prepare data and materials for the first volume of capital (Das Kapital). Work as a contribution to the critique of political economy, theories of surplus value , or a new outline for a critique of the political economy tend to be considered as preparatory writings of his monumental theoretical work. Meanwhile, it did not keep new clashes with those who called "adventurers" and "Alchemists" of the revolution.

However, when the international workers Association (popularly known as the international) was founded in London in 1864, their leaders called Karl Marx to participate and collaborate in the drafting of its first documents. If Marx is considered the creator of modern communism, and international his first specific training for workers around the world, the truth is he was founder or leader of this, but only the intellectual guide of a sector of it.

As a member of the general Council, he worked actively in the drafting of the initial memory and the statutes of the Association, at the time that completed the elaboration of the first volume of capital, which was published in London in 1867. It was the only volume published in life of its author (volumes II and III unveiled them Engels, respectively, in 1885 and 1894), and all this work had a decisive influence throughout the following century. Only quite later began to give importance to the study and knowledge of the youth and previous works of Karl Marx. The ideological core of the capital part of the denial of philosophical speculation as the Foundation of the revolutionary political action, which must be based on positive knowledge of the historical, social and economic reality. In this last aspect, it introduces the concept of the «added value» as value of human work that appropriates the owner of the means of production.

The International was born at an opportune moment, as union and specific organization of the labour movement, in both expression of working-class further than national borders. In 1869 he already reached the figure of 800,000 members, with a general Council composed of representatives of different countries «sections». In 1870, Engels managed to move to London. Interestingly, were the Italians who asked that it incorporated the Council as a delegate of his section. The entrance of his close collaborator relieved Marx of the intense task such as «brain» Association and enabled him to devote more time to his studies at the British Museum and his theoretical writings.

Marx in 1882

Despite being who he was, Karl Marx was not a household name in the rest of Europe: in part because I was writing in German (but his works were not published in Germany) and in part because their conceptual elaborations and his style were not precisely within the reach of the masses. It was the popular uprising in Paris in 1871, known as the commune, which adopted the capital as theoretical basis, he proclaimed the first historical experience of "dictatorship of the proletariat" and spread the name of Karl Marx by everyone. Most of the revolutionaries and labor leaders took their ideas (although not all drink them in your original source) and began the veneration of his person and his work as a quintessence of revolutionary thinking.

Meanwhile, the Marx of flesh and bone was embroiled in a furious dispute of factions in the Council general of international. His opponent was Mijaíl Bakunin, and the theme of confrontation was the way to go in the revolutionary struggle. The Russian anarchist leader, that the commune of Lyon had set up in 1870, resulted in the destruction of nation States and disagreed with the paper that gave his rival to party and industrial workers as a revolutionary vanguard. The confrontation also fed on butting and strong individualities of both adversaries and its impossible to hide personal rancor. Marx, which was not free from prejudices, came to say: 'Don't trust the Russians'. There is a certain prophetic intuition who, not without irony, saw in that phrase.

At the Congress in 1872 in the Hague, the partisans of Marx got the expulsion of Bakunin and his followers of the international workers Association. At the same meeting, Engels announced that the headquarters of the Council moved from London to New York, news that was received with justified concern for the attendees. Indeed, that would go down in history as the first international languished in its American until they disappear. Then would come the II, III and IV International, diverse ideological sign and without relation to the person of Marx. Decided to retire from political activism in 1873, to devote himself to the study and theoretical work.

Several authors consider the intellectual capacity of Karl Marx was weakened significantly in the last decade of his life. The truth is that it was a man sick, almost sixty and deeply disillusioned by the misunderstanding or the trivialization of his thought by many of those who should develop it and put it into practice. In his mature works, it recovered much of the style and terminology of the philosophical language of Hegel, as Marx himself, by "intellectual flirtation" with the work of his former master and as a response to the «autonomy» showing leftist culture for several years. On the other hand, he sought also to express its appreciation to the founder of dialectic, despite not having shared his "idealistic complicit».

Despite that semirretiro and the decline of its creative energies, Marx received visits and correspondence from workers and political leaders in this final stage. It never neglected and always maintained a personal magnetism on circles revolutionaries (including those who did not share their views), who could not escape what Engels called its "unique influence". Towards 1877 with very broken health, definitely took refuge in home life. And it was precisely in the family circle where two consecutive misfortunes that probably precipitated his death occurred. On December 2, 1881 passed away his wife, and just a year later, on January 11, 1883, his daughter, Jenny Longuet. Alone, dejected, with the weakened mind and seriously affected lungs, Karl Marx died or were left to die on March 14, 1883. His grave in a London cemetery is goal of pilgrimage of Marxists and not Marxist who revere the importance of his work and deep intellectual openness of thought until today.

Karl Marx and the Capital

Unanimously regarded as the work of Karl Marx, capital is a great Treaty in three volumes. The first was published in Hamburg in 1867; the second and the third were published by Engels after the death of the author, respectively in 1885 and 1894.

Usually, only the first volume, which, despite being the most important and fundamental, does not give a comprehensive idea of the thinking of Marx is known. In capitalist society (thus begins the volume) the merchandise does not have for its social value: has become an abstract object, a fetish. In particular, the money "that reflects on a good relations with all other" takes over the human soul, bullying her as a demon. The money is to buy the men and the work of these.

Fuerza-trabajo, producer of the goods, is changed and is purchased like any other commodity, and obeys the same laws of the market, forgetting that behind them there is a man, with his family: the proletarian. This proletarian is free, but if he does not sell his work dies of hunger. He sells his capacity for work, but this is a personal quality, and can not be sold separately; This once the contract between worker and capitalist, this with all of your personality and your needs, passed into the hands of the other.

Karl Marx

For the capitalist, money must multiply money. Also the money spent on wages is multiplied, or acquired human force produced by the capitalist added value, as well as the value that pay. The formation of surplus value and its increase is carried out in the following ways: 1) the capitalist obliges the operator to give his work more than that is needed to compensate the wage; 2 °) produces the mercancia-trabajo, instead of consuming as any other, (when consumed) worth more than he represents, namely, that the work produces a surplus on its cost, which is the appreciation, monopolized by the capitalist, which has the power impose on the operator the conditions you want; 3 °) when it is not possible to subsequently increase the working day directly, the capitalist seeks to increase it indirectly, by modifying the technical process; any improvement of the productive technique is equivalent to an increase of working hours; It increases the production and therefore costs extra surplus value.

This last consideration makes it clear that, at a point in the evolution of the productive process, i.e. when the capitalist has led to its extreme limit the first two modes of exploitation, the problem of the increase in the surplus becomes essentially a technical problem: improve the technical means of production. Mechanical inventions have been, in this respect, the great resource of the capitalist.

In the hands of the capitalist surplus value becomes new capital: accumulation is thus obtained. For a process whose various stages analyzes Marx in the work, leads to the concentration of capital and centralization, until capitalism falls into a vicious circle. Here's how the closed circle of the capitalist system is synthesized in the thinking of Marx: production competition beat the lowest price; the lowest price is the result of a high-performance work, and this resolves on more powerful machines and sophisticated workshops, and therefore one greater capital; Hence the need to accumulate at increasing pace; but the more machines, accumulate more proportionally decreases the number of workers and smaller is the proportion of working capital (labor) with respect to the fixed capital (machines, installations, etc.); as capital gains derived from working capital, the smaller the proportion of this capital, the lower is the proportion of the capital gain (which may increase in absolute value, but decreases in relative value).

Meanwhile, grows the mass of unemployed workers, so that the possibilities of consumption decrease, while on the other hand increase the goods on the market. Then it is necessary, so that unemployed persons back to consume, fill them in new branches of industry, or develop existing ones. But for this are needed new capital and new capital cannot be obtained but with accumulation, and accumulation is not obtained, but with the increase of the added value. To increase the relative value of the appreciation would be expedient decrease the value of labor, by lowering the price of the goods consumed by the worker. To reduce the price of the goods, it is necessary to increase productivity, improving the technique. And to improve the technique, it is necessary also accumulate, increasing the added value, and so on.

Monument to Marx and Engels in Berlin

The vicious circle is closed. When the circle is interrupted; filled with stores, and closed outlets, the market already does not accept anything; bankruptcy, workers jobless, hungry revolts: crisis. Such is the vicious circle of the capitalist system; but this, like the system that is expression, has also had its starting point. The origin of capitalism is the origin of the accumulation, original sin of political economy. The first accumulation of capital is the result of an expropriation: privately owned conquered with the work. Immediately is a new form of expropriation: the of the lower capital, which already takes advantage of a crowd of workers. All capitalist has killed others, and most of the time, will be dead by one older than him.

The process reaches such extremes that, at any given time, the number of capitalists is very small and becomes threatening for them the mass of misery that, at the opposite pole, is organized, joins, and are rising up. It is the own development of the capitalist mechanism that encourages this mass; Indeed, the monopoly of the capital becomes an impediment even emerged from the same capitalism methods of production. The concentration of the means of production and socialization of the work reach such limits that they are incompatible with the capitalist structure, within which have originated and been determined. The structure becomes superstructure, and will collapse. The end of capitalist property nearby. The expropriators are expropriated.

The second volume described in detail the functioning of the market, which are slaves to the capitalists; but these, to reduce the risks of the vagaries of the market, help each other, founded the pews and adopt security measures. Thus chaotic phenomena eventually regularized, and the capitalist gets to live more secure in its own building. But meanwhile the mechanism has complicated, and the capitalist, despite follow only obtaining the appreciation of its industrial activity, assumes new functions: becomes mediator, banker, merchant, landowner. It is made to help by a crowd of other people: these help capital to achieve their profit, and therefore demand a part of it. The advantage, hereafter, shall be divided between all the Wolves of the Horde. The way how to be be divided is marked by the game itself from the capitalist mechanism.

Already the classical economics had noticed that capital employed in most companies give, in the same country and at the same time, an equal benefit proportion. In the third volume of capital, Marx explains the different benefits are equal at the time of the sale of the goods, because the capital do not enter the out of production, but only its part in general booty. Capitalists behave, with regard to the profit, as shareholders of a great society: not Outstand each other but by the relative amount of capital used by each of them.

Karl Marx and Marxism

Although there is talk of Marxism to refer to the doctrines of Marx, you can not forget that Marx himself declared on one occasion not be Marxist, which meant the refusal to his thinking was considered dogma and are inward-looking you narrowness of scholastic. In addition, at various stages of his intellectual evolution maintained the need to adhere to the specific situations against the temptation to build pure timeless abstractions.

Not only between Marxists and no-marxistas, but between the same Marxist, discussed under which of these meanings can be more properly considered Marxism. All Marxists are based, obviously, in the theories of Marx, but you are forced to claim in each case the correct understanding and proper interpretation of the doctrines of the original Marx demonstrates the insufficiently dogmatic commitment. That is why you have to distinguish between Marxism in its different expressions and variants (Marxism) and the same doctrine of Marx (Marxian), although the meaning of "Marxism" cannot be less than be associated with the theoretical production and practico-politica action of Carlos Marx.

The problem is that the work of Marx has been understood so different as it is seen in it a conception of the world, a philosophy, a philosophical anthropology, a science, specifically a sociology, a way to explain and change history, a series of standards for political action that should vary according to historical circumstances, an ideology , etc. This diversity of views make it difficult to justify the unilateral option for one of the listed alternatives.

The problem is more complicated still when you consider that throughout his life is they were giving change in the own intellectual interests of Marx that raise the question of the continuity and discontinuity of his own thought. For some performers, at the beginning of his intellectual production, Marx would work within channels considered to be philosophical, but specifically philosophical interests would be decreasing, or decline, for the benefit of sociological, political and economic interests, which would culminate in the mature Marx with the construction of a science (Althusser).

Marx and Engels

The opposition between a mature Marx and a young Marx has divided the interpreters; some highlight the importance of Marx humanist against Marx economist and sociologist, and others the opposite. Some, on the other hand, have underlined the continuity of thought from Marx, which seems to have been demonstrated with the missing link of the Grundrisse of 1857-1858. However, even admitted differences between the two Marx, notes the constant attitude of Marx in his firm belief in Socialist and Communist. To the extent that Marx tried to give an explanation of the social changes, his thinking would be sociological character. The problem then is whether the sociology of Marx is equal or not to an objective social science. Those who support this character emphasize the scientific aspect of Marxism. However those who deny it (Lukacs) highlights the fundamentally "partisan" nature of Marxism, interpreting it not as a scientific sociology, but as the social philosophy of the working class and, therefore, as their own, blighting ideology of all other ideologies.

The Marxism philosophy

In philosophical sense Marxism can be understood as a criticism of idealistic philosophy (Hegel) and mechanistic materialism (Feuerbach). Criticism of Marx philosophy, which is carried out in particular in the German ideology, although the essential Marx had already written it in the contribution to the critique of the philosophy of Hegel law, had as main partner to Hegel, as Hegel meant the expression more mature and exemplary of what the philosophy was as "interpretation" of reality , containing at the same time the germs for a transformation of philosophy, and as in Hegel the theoretical and ideological consummation of the cristiano-burgues world took place.

The collapse of the Hegelian system would mean the collapse of the cristiano-burguesa conception of the world. Understanding what "previous philosophical consciousness" understood by philosophy by philosophy, Marxism carries out a harsh critique of the "philosophy as philosophy" proclaiming his disappearance after overcoming. "Philosophy as philosophy" is conceptualized as an ideology whose need has been historic, but eliminated its basis in reality, "the social misery", will no longer be necessary.

Despite everything, the Marxism can be considered in Marx as a philosophy in the traditional sense, insofar as its criticism contained the germs of an ontology and a conception of the world that intended to carry out a rational clarification of consciousness, enclosed a culture and dilucidaba the place that man must take in the world.

The Marxism as science

In economico-sociologico sense, Marxism is intended to be a theory of social reality, in particular of bourgeois capitalist society, a critique and alternative to the English political economy (Ricardo, Quesnay and Adam Smith), a "macrosociologia" and a science of history. The attention provided to the explanation of the genesis, description of the structure and critical of capitalist society, and predicting the collapse of this society, victim of its internal crises and the revolutionary force of the proletariat, seem to make Marx's fundamentally an economist and sociologist.

The fundamental contribution of Marx to political economy lies in his capital. Marx showed the historical character of the modes of production and of the laws governing its functioning breaking with the ahistorical concept of classical economists and economic laws.

The complexity of the economic doctrine of Marx can be summarized in six primary traits: 1) the idea that products launched onto the market have a price. 2.) the idea that for those products is used the work of employees, work is given to which also price, turning it into merchandise. 3 °) the idea that produced by the employee has a value higher than the wage received by the worker, even discounting the costs of production, distribution, etc. This plus in question is the appreciation, which is snatched the worker by the capitalist. 4 th) the idea that both the technical progress and the needs of competition require capitalists to form large monopolies, destroying this way small businesses and social class (small bourgeoisie) possessor of these companies. 5 °) the idea that there are inevitable crisis in the capitalist market (crisis of overproduction, for example) and that these crises produce conflicts (including wars) in the course of which it destroys capitalism. 6.) the idea that the amount of proletarians and poor increases as decreases the number of capitalists and oppressors.

A scientistic interpretation of Marx has been a purely scientific theory (economic, historical and sociological) in its doctrine. Convinced that Marx, in the course of their research, evolved from philosophy to science, proponents of this interpretation granted only to the work of youth Marx a purely historical interest and focus all their attention on their realizations of maturity, especially in the capital. This interpretation of Marxism was already made at the end of the 19th century by the main theoreticians of the so-called "Orthodox Marxism" (Kautsky, Plechanov, Hilferding) introducing a Marxism, "indicative", as a science objective not interested in any value judgment. Within the Communist movement, this "scientistic" interpretation of Marxism made their influence felt in the version that gave mechanistic school, at least until 1929.

But was Lous Althusser who, especially in his work the theoretical Marx revolution, approached "scientistic" vision, but it is not identified with it. Althusser established an opposition between the work of youth of Marx and his mature work: between the two, there would be an "epistemological rupture" concept which Althusser took Bachelard, understood as the passage of a pre-scientific problem, mixed still with ideology, to a genuinely scientific problems.

The transition from ideology to science does not mean, however, a negation of philosophy. In 1845 when Marx broke with the ideological discourse of his youth, he had founded and said Althusser, a new science: historical materialism; but, at the same time, a philosophy: dialectical materialism; and this in a single movement. The object of historical materialism was the society; the object of dialectical materialism was the scientific knowledge. The capital, which was the most significant work of Marx, has at the same time a scientific meaning and philosophical meaning. On the one hand, it founded the science of economy, i.e. the science of a particular sector of society, and on the other hand, presents a new conception of knowledge.

Monument to Marx in Chemnitz, Germany

It is here where the most genuine sense of the philosophy of Marx, who would be in the polar opposite of humanism, Historicism, that they dominated his early work would be for Althusser. Althusser, arguing the existence of an epistemological rupture between the philosopher Marx first and second scientific Marx, has highlighted the structural character of this thought as an explanation of the fundamental structures of human society. The discovery of these structures would make it possible to understand the surface and more visible structures not only in a certain phase of history, but in all of human history.

However, admittedly, with Ferrater Mora, that although there may be differences between the "two Marx", the interests of the Marx mature critique of political economy and capital do not seem outside the of the young Marx, especially the economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844, when less to the extent that this develops also an effort to understand the real alienation that characterizes the work from the moment that ceases of operate the primitive communism. In addition, the close relationship between theory and practice and the firm denial of a gap between facts and values are assumptions that seem to be consistent in all phases of the thought of Marx.

Marxism as revolutionary praxis

In political sense, Marxism means a critique of the political action of the French Utopian socialism (Fourier and Proudhon, Saint-Simon, etc.) and a revolutionary praxis (scientific socialism) aimed at the transformation of reality and of the social economic structure. In fact, this is the great goal pursued by all the theoretical formulation of Marxism from the first until the last writings: "the philosophers have been limited to variously interpret the world; But what matters is to transform it,"wrote Marx. The Marxist theory, therefore, achieves its Supreme realisation which is projected in a historic action. The revolutionary praxis, conceived from the outset as a painful learning process should be open to a permanent review and a renewed realization.

Marxism, as the theory of a practice that has been articulated from the problems of the modern bourgeois society of industrial civilization, appears as an attempt, especially practical, to resolve this problem in a theoretical and reflective way in a certain direction. The practical interest, serving as conductor of the knowledge, in the theoretical field is expressed in the problem of how it is possible to release the increased labour productivity industrial chains and the destructive effects that has in its form of capitalist organization.

Practical motion, which is this interest is conceived in Marxism as a process of self-defense and self-liberation of those who suffer the negative effects of the bourgeois society, such as emancipation of the working classes of the possessing classes. The working classes are summarized under the name of "proletariat", and the sector that determines the character of this movement is the industrial workforce. The goal of this movement is the appropriation of the modern means of production by the immediate producers. The expropriation of the means of production is a moment of this appropriation, which leads to a classless society where it becomes a universal appropriation, i.e., insofar as you remove the limitations of the current division of labor and distribute to each individual an amount of force production.

Marx in London (1875)

This orientation markedly practice of Marxism is that would be present in interpretations of Karl Vorländer, who argues the idea that socialism cannot be detached from demands. It highlights the inspiration for character ethics in the work of Marx, obvious in the writings of youth, but also present in the capital. The same thesis was defended by Maximilien Rubel in his work Karl Marx. Essai de biographie intellectuelle (1957). According to this, in the work of Marx there would be no shift from an ideological point of view to a scientific position, but that rather, it would be marked by the duality between an objective science and revolutionary ethics. "As objective research, historical materialism essentially deals with the analysis of the historical facts, whose connection sets rigorously conforming to a type of scientific accuracy;" as ethical doctrine tries to formulate the principles that should direct the activity of the working class to achieve liberation and to organize a fully human society".

The meaning more appropriate, therefore, to describe in a general way "Marxian" would be to consider the theory and practice of Marx as a real, revolutionary and militant humanism as theory of a praxis of human emancipation within an international industrial civilization turned into a unit. Marxism, on the other hand, would not have been creation of own Marx, i.e. it would not represent the sum of the opinions of Marx, but the complex historical product of interpretations of the theories of Marx. As a universal philosophy of materialist base, began where Marx ended, i.e., creating a system that is closed in itself, socio-political, economic, and philosophical intuitions.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas