Karl Marx Essays (564 words) - Marxist Theory, Marxism, Karl Marx

Karl Marx Karl Marx wrote many works throughout his time, but one of the works of his youth was called On Man and History. This work by Marx was written when he was a youth and was influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the works of Hegel philosophy. There are two sections in this document one is the Alienated Man and the other is History. The first section by Marx talks about how man is alienated by the process of labor and the product that is made out of the labor. Marx says that the process of labor is an alienation because man does not do work for their own pleasure and the labor is not part of the nature of man, but the labor is forced upon man to gain other satisfaction such as entertainment, money, and food. In addition, Marx states that the work done by a person is not for him or herself but for consumers or it belongs to a man other than the worker. The other part in this section is the relationship between man and the products they produce. Each "commodity" (product) produced by the worker devalues themselves even more every time the worker produces it and when the commodity increases in price. This happens because the worker uses their own energy to produce the product thus losing the inner self and inner life. Marx also, says this about religion; when man attributes to god the less they have of themselves. According to Marx the reason for these, alienation of man is because of Capitalism related to private property. In the second section, Marx states that throughout history the ruling ideas are always the ruling society, ruling class, and ruling intellectual force. The reason that ruling classes rules over intelligence according to Marx is because that class has the material means to be dominant. He gives the examples of when the bourgeoisie was the ruling class freedom and equality would dominant, but when the aristocracy the concepts of honor and loyalty would dominant society ways of thinking. The reason this kind of thing happens is that people will listen to people who have power. This is still clearly shown throughout society today. One example of this is Peter Warrick and the department store incident. If Peter Warrick was a regular person, he probably would of not gotten the discount that he got for the colthes he got, but by being a nationally reconginized star he got the discount that he got. Another example of this is the O.J Simpson trial. If O.J Simpson was a regular person the trial would not of gone nationally and might had been a different outcome, but by being a star, he influenced the national public and got a not guilty verdict. Throughout this document, Marx clearly showed many biases. One of them was he was an atheist because in the section of Alienated Man he says that religion is the same way as labor because once a person attributes to God the less he is left with themselves. His second bias is towards communism and his dislike of capitalism. He shows this bias in the last part of the Alienated Man by saying that private property and capitalism is why the alienation of man happens. Marx got all these bias when he was young by reading Hegel and Feuerbach; also by living through the industrial revolution influence all these biases. This document written by young Marx influenced many things throughout history: it was one of the starting foundations of later works by Marx for example The Communist Manifesto and also laid the foundation of Communism.