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Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx 's materialist approach to theory , or works written by Marxists . Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism , which drew from various sources, and the official philosophy in the Soviet Union , which enforced a rigid reading of what Marx called dialectical materialism , in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied as aesthetics , ethics , ontology , epistemology , social philosophy , political philosophy , the philosophy of science , and the philosophy of history . The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought. The theory is also about the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie .

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224-487: In Marxist theory , the Lumpenproletariat ( German: [ˈlʊmpn̩pʁoletaʁi̯ˌaːt] ; / ˌ l ʌ m p ə n p r oʊ l ɪ ˈ t ɛər i ə t / ) is the underclass devoid of class consciousness . Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly in

448-565: A New York Times review that the authors argue that the United States is being "split between an isolated caste of ruling meritocrats on one hand and a vast, powerless Lumpenproletariat on the other. Society, the authors predict, will have little use for this underclass in a world dominated by sophisticated machines and the bright human beings who tend them." Several commentators and researchers have analyzed Donald Trump 's political base as modern American lumpenproletariat . Trumpen Proletariat

672-407: A "Marxist philosopher", that one would doubtlessly be Louis Althusser : Althusser proposed a 'new definition' of philosophy as "class struggle in theory"... Marxism had proper signification (and original "problematic") only insofar as it was the theory of the tendency towards communism, and in view of its realization. The criteria of acceptance or rejection of a 'marxist' proposition was always

896-557: A "rural lumpenproletariat ". Ernesto Ragionieri , an Italian Marxist historian, argued to have confirmed in his 1953 book Un comune socialista that the lumpenproletariat is essentially a conservative force based on his study of Sesto Fiorentino . He found that some 450–500 members of the working class had joined the liberal-conservative party, which was led by landowners, industrialists, and professionals in hopes of getting recommendation that would allow them to join Richard-Ginori ,

1120-578: A "tool of reaction" in the revolutions of 1848 and as a "significant counterrevolutionary force throughout Europe." Engels wrote in The Peasant War in Germany (1850) that the lumpenproletariat is a "phenomenon that occurs in a more or less developed form in all the so far known phases of society". In The Communist Manifesto (1848), where lumpenproletariat is commonly translated in English editions as

1344-457: A 1932 article on "How Mussolini Triumphed" Leon Trotsky described the "declassed and demoralized" lumpenproletariat as "the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy." He argued that capitalism used them through fascism. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia , written from the Marxist-Leninist perspective, defined lumpenproletariat as: The term

1568-498: A book which is often seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism , The German Ideology . In this work, Marx broke with Ludwig Feuerbach , Bruno Bauer , Max Stirner and the rest of the Young Hegelians, while he also broke with Karl Grün and other "true socialists" whose philosophies were still based in part on " idealism ". In German Ideology , Marx and Engels finally completed their philosophy, which

1792-486: A child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education. He became a lawyer with a comfortably upper middle class income and the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards, in addition to his income as an attorney. Prior to his son's birth and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland , Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia , taking on

2016-510: A contemporary reader. Marxist and Marx-influenced 20th century theory, such as (to name a few random examples) the critical theory of the Frankfurt School , the political writing of Antonio Gramsci , and the neo-Marxism of Fredric Jameson , must take Marx's condemnation of philosophy into account, but many such thinkers also feel a strong need to remedy the perceived theoretical problems with orthodox Marxism . Such problems might include

2240-445: A crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type – collective production and appropriation". He added that "the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies". Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under

2464-459: A critical adoption and radicalization of the categories of 18th and 19th century German Idealist thought. Of particular importance is Hegel's appropriation of Aristotle's organicist and essentialist categories in the light of Kant's transcendental turn. Marx builds on four contributions Hegel makes to our philosophical understanding. They are: (1) the replacement of mechanism and atomism with Aristotelean categories of organicism and essentialism, (2)

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2688-678: A criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer . This work was published in 1845 as The Holy Family . Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach , but eventually Marx and Engels abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well. During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vaneau in Paris (from October 1843 until January 1845), Marx engaged in an intensive study of political economy ( Adam Smith , David Ricardo , James Mill , etc. ) ,

2912-530: A defence of the Commune. Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand and provide a critique suitable for the capitalist mode of production , and hence spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the British Museum studying. By 1857, Marx had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property , wage labour,

3136-424: A diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father and treasured his memory after his death. By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short novel, Scorpion and Felix ; a drama, Oulanem ; as well as a number of love poems dedicated to his wife. None of this early work was published during his lifetime. The love poems were published posthumously in

3360-452: A diversity in the lumpen population, especially in terms of consciousness. Post-anarchist Saul Newman wrote in 2010 that classical anarchists argue that the lumpenproletariat should be designated as a revolutionary class. According to Tom Brass , individualist anarchist Max Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat as authentic rebels." Anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin , who was dubbed "the lumpen prince" by Engels, wrote that only in

3584-560: A group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837. They gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer , with Marx developing a particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg . Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions but adopted his dialectical method to criticise established society, politics and religion from a left-wing perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in

3808-813: A handbill entitled the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany , in which he argued for only four of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto , believing that in Germany at that time the bourgeoisie must overthrow the feudal monarchy and aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie. On 1 June, Marx started the publication of a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his father. Designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist interpretation of events,

4032-402: A higher level of human consciousness of freedom. Each stage also has its own principle or law according to which it develops and lives in accordance with this freedom. Yet the law is not free-standing. It is delivered by means of the actions of men which spring from their needs, passions, and interests. Teleology, according to Hegel, is not opposed to the efficient causation provided by passion; on

4256-606: A house or flat, apparently to make it harder for the authorities to track him down. While in Paris, he used that of "Monsieur Ramboz", whilst in London, he signed off his letters as "A. Williams". His friends referred to him as "Moor", owing to his dark complexion and black curly hair, while he encouraged his children to call him "Old Nick" and "Charley". He also bestowed nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family, referring to Friedrich Engels as "General", his housekeeper Helene as "Lenchen" or "Nym", while one of his daughters, Jennychen,

4480-412: A journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus ( Atheistic Archives ), but it never came to fruition. In July, Marx and Bauer took a trip to Bonn from Berlin. There they scandalised their class by getting drunk, laughing in church and galloping through the streets on donkeys. Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the government's growing opposition to classical liberalism and

4704-472: A natural thing like a tree is a process that by and large points back toward itself: every step of the process takes place in order to reproduce the genus. In the historical process, however, what exists, what is actual, is imperfect. It is inimical to the potential. What is trying to come into existence - freedom - inherently negates everything preceding it and everything existing, since no actual existing human institution can possibly embody pure human freedom. So

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4928-461: A new system known as the socialist mode of production . For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis -prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness , leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless , communist society constituted by a free association of producers . Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that

5152-582: A new, radical left-wing Parisian newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher ( German-French Annals ), then being set up by the German activist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals. Therefore Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau , they found the living conditions difficult, so moved out following

5376-846: A newspaper themselves, he and Engels turned to international journalism. At one stage they were being published by six newspapers from England, the United States, Prussia , Austria, and South Africa. Marx's principal earnings came from his work as European correspondent, from 1852 to 1862, for the New-York Daily Tribune , and from also producing articles for more "bourgeois" newspapers. Marx had his articles translated from German by Wilhelm Pieper  [ de ] , until his proficiency in English had become adequate. The New-York Daily Tribune had been founded in April 1841 by Horace Greeley . Its editorial board contained progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers, among them George Ripley and

5600-399: A place amongst the 19th century philosophers who criticized this pre-eminence of the subject and its consciousness . Instead, Marx saw consciousness as political . According to Marx, the recognition of these individual rights was the result of the universal extension of market relations to all of society and to all of the world, first through the primitive accumulation of capital (including

5824-460: A preview of his three-volume Das Kapital (English title: Capital: Critique of Political Economy ), which he intended to publish at a later date. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , Marx began to critically examine axioms and categories of economic thinking. The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly. The successful sales of A Contribution to

6048-910: A request from the Prussian king, the French government shut down Vorwärts! , with the interior minister, François Guizot , expelling Marx from France. Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845. However, to stay in Belgium he had to pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics. In Brussels, Marx associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess , Karl Heinzen and Joseph Weydemeyer . In April 1845, Engels moved from Barmen in Germany to Brussels to join Marx and

6272-410: A revolution and change society. This was the intent of the new book that Marx was planning, but to get the manuscript past the government censors he called the book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and offered it as a response to the "petty-bourgeois philosophy" of the French anarchist socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as expressed in his book The Philosophy of Poverty (1840). These books laid

6496-535: A revolutionary movement. According to Michael Denning Fanon revived the term, long having been disappeared from left-wing discourse, in this book The Wretched of the Earth (1961). He defined the lumpenproletariat as the peasantry in colonial societies of the Third World not involved in industrial production who are unaware of the dominant colonial ideology and are therefore, "ready, capable and willing to revolt against

6720-566: A rival newspaper, the New York Sun , at which he was editor-in-chief. In April 1857, Dana invited Marx to contribute articles, mainly on military history, to the New American Cyclopedia , an idea of George Ripley, Dana's friend and literary editor of the Tribune . In all, 67 Marx-Engels articles were published, of which 51 were written by Engels, although Marx did some research for them in

6944-428: A sense, compared with Weltanschauung designed to legitimize the current state of affairs, and effective transformation of the world through praxis , which combines theory and practice in a materialist way, is what distinguish "Marxist philosophers" with the rest of philosophers. Indeed, Marx's break with German Idealism involves a new definition of philosophy ; Louis Althusser, founder of " Structural Marxism " in

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7168-600: A ten-room property near the Porta Nigra . His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics . Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854) married Lion Philips (1794–1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips . Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little

7392-412: A thing is revealed in the entire, typical process of development of that thing. Looked at purely formally, human society has a natural line of development in accordance with its essence just like any other living thing. This process of development appears as a succession of stages of world history. (2) Stages of world history Human history passes through several stages, in each of which is materialized

7616-409: A time to join the socialist movement, the way a person must be persuaded to adopt any different belief, Marx knew that people would tend, on most occasions, to act in accordance with their own economic interests, thus appealing to an entire class (the working class in this case) with a broad appeal to the class's best material interest would be the best way to mobilise the broad mass of that class to make

7840-429: A too-simple economic determinism , an untenable theory of ideology as " false consciousness ," or a simplistic model of state power rather than hegemony . So Marxist philosophy must continue to take account of advances in the theory of politics developed after Marx, but it must also be wary of a descent into theoreticism or the temptations of idealism . Étienne Balibar claimed that if one philosopher could be called

8064-476: A transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin . Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen , an educated member of the petty nobility who had known Marx since childhood. As she had broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial owing to

8288-599: A vast number of people in urban and rural areas into illegitimate occupations and activities. Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only way" to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform "so as to effect qualitative changes in these elements." He argued that the lumpenproletariat had a dual nature. Simultaneously, they were "victimized members of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements with 'parasitic inclinations ' ", which made them waver between revolution and counterrevolution. He believed that lumpenproletariat elements, such as triads ,

8512-538: A way to combine the two, believing that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club ( Doktorklub ), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with

8736-605: A working-class revolution. After a long struggle that threatened to ruin the Communist League, Marx's opinion prevailed and eventually, the Willich/Schapper group left the Communist League. Meanwhile, Marx also became heavily involved with the socialist German Workers' Educational Society. The Society held their meetings in Great Windmill Street , Soho , central London's entertainment district. This organisation

8960-458: Is an oversimplification , it still has some measure of truth. On the other hand, Costanzo Preve (1990) has assigned four "masters" to Marx: Epicurus (to whom he dedicated his thesis, Difference of natural philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus , 1841) for his materialism and theory of clinamen which opened up a realm of liberty ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau , from which come his idea of egalitarian democracy ; Adam Smith , from whom came

9184-430: Is debatable (the answer depends on what is meant by "philosophy"). Balibar's remark is intended to explain the significance of the final line of Karl Marx's 11 Theses on Feuerbach (1845), which can be read as an epitaph for philosophy: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it". If this claim (which Marx originally intended as a criticism of German Idealism and

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9408-404: Is discovered that he was no "free agent," that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him "so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited." For "protection" against "the serpent of their agonies," the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel

9632-435: Is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking, and the products of their thinking. Life

9856-457: Is its "dialectical" character. The process of natural development occurs in a relatively straight line from the germ to the fully realized being and back to the germ again. Some accident from the outside might come along to interrupt this process of development, but if left to its own devices, it proceeds in a relatively straightforward manner. Society's historical development is internally more complex. The transaction from potentiality to actuality

10080-590: Is known of Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church on 28 August 1824, and their mother in November 1825. Marx was privately educated by his father until 1830 when he entered Trier High School ( Gymnasium zu Trier  [ de ] ), whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach ,

10304-429: Is mediated by consciousness and will. The essence realized in the development of human society is freedom, but freedom is precisely that ability to negate the smooth line of development and go off in novel, hitherto unforeseen directions. As humankind's essence reveals itself, that revelation is at the same time the subversion of itself. Spirit is constantly at war with itself. This appears as the contradictions constituting

10528-466: Is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations." Thereupon, instead of founding itself on the singular, concrete individual subject , as did classic philosophy, including contractualism ( Hobbes , John Locke and Rousseau ) but also political economy , Marx began with the totality of social relations: labour, language and all which constitute our human existence. He claimed that individualism

10752-440: Is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Also, in his Theses on Feuerbach (1845), in which the young Marx broke with Feuerbach's idealism, he writes that "the philosophers have only described the world, in various ways, the point is to change it," and his materialist approach allows for and empowers such change. This opposition between various subjective interpretations given by philosophers, which may be, in

10976-567: Is not grounded on an opposition to the Enlightenment 's universalism and humanist project on behalf of the right of tradition , as in Burke's case, but rather on the claim that the ideology of economism and the ideology of the human rights are the reverse sides of the same coin. However, as Étienne Balibar puts it, "the accent put on those contradictions can not not ring out on the signification of 'human rights', since these therefore appears both as

11200-442: Is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society." He distinguished the finance aristocracy from the industrial bourgeoisie as the former became rich "not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others." He further suggests that the lumpenproletariat is a component of the proletariat, unlike his earlier works. He claimed that the gardes mobiles were set up "to set one segment of

11424-405: Is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor... The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production , produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with

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11648-461: Is the history of class struggles". It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the Manifesto presents the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal political parties and groups at

11872-455: Is theft! ", in The Poverty of Philosophy (1845). Marx's early writings are thus a response towards Hegel, German Idealism and a break with the rest of the Young Hegelians. Marx, stood Hegel on his feet, in his own view of his role, by turning the idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas, instead of the other way around. In this, Marx

12096-446: Is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which

12320-548: The 2016 presidential election campaign, to Marx's rhetoric of the lumpenproletariat . In 2020 Ryan Lizza coined Biden Proletariat to describe an underclass of campaign workers and supporters—"veterans of the Biden campaign"—who were cast aside during post-election White House staffing, thus carrying on a tradition in Democratic politics of abandoning loyal political workers in favor of well-connected political elites. Ranjit Gupta ,

12544-666: The Armenian genocide , prisoners were pardoned and released from prison to serve in bands, or çetes . Criminals and other elements of the lumpenproletariat hoped to gain respectability and wealth through their participation in genocide. During World War II , the Nazi German Waffen-SS division Dirlewanger Brigade recruited poachers and criminals to wage the Bandenbekämpfung on the Eastern Front . In Kigali , during

12768-661: The Black Panther Party and the Young Lords , have sought to mobilize the Lumpenproletariat . Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are generally considered to have coined the term Lumpenproletariat . It is composed of the German word Lumpen , which is usually translated as "ragged" and prolétariat , a French word adopted as a common Marxist term for the class of wage earners in a capitalist system. Hal Draper argued that

12992-726: The British Museum . By the late 1850s, American popular interest in European affairs waned and Marx's articles turned to topics such as the "slavery crisis" and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 in the "War Between the States". Between December 1851 and March 1852, Marx worked on his theoretical work about the French Revolution of 1848 , titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon . In this he explored concepts in historical materialism , class struggle , dictatorship of

13216-511: The Chartist movement in the United Kingdom , he cut away with the environment in which he grew up and encountered the proletariat in France and Germany. He then wrote a scathing criticism of the Young Hegelians in two books, The Holy Family (1845), and The German Ideology (1845), in which he criticized not only Bauer but also Max Stirner 's The Ego and Its Own (1844), considered one of

13440-590: The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 1 . Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the study of both English and Italian, art history and the translation of Latin classics. He began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature , which he completed in 1841. It

13664-550: The Communist League , and in 1848 they wrote The Communist Manifesto , which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital . From 1864, Marx was involved in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he fought

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13888-523: The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and would later arrive to his theory of commodity fetishism , exposed in the first chapter of the first book of Das Kapital (1867). This abandonment of the early theory of alienation would be amply discussed, and several Marxist theorists, including Marxist humanists such as the Praxis School , would return to it. Others, such as Althusser, would claim that

14112-672: The Euromaidan protests in 2013–14, were characterized as lumpen elements. The 1979 report of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education warned that the US is in danger of creating "a permanent underclass, a self‐perpetuating culture of poverty, a substantial 'lumpen proletariat'." Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in 1985: "An American version of a lumpenproletariat (the so-called underclass), without work and without hope, existing at

14336-486: The Frankfurt School , believed that the working class in the US "having been bought up by the consumer society, has lost all class consciousness" and lay the hopes for revolution on the lumpenproletariat —the social outcasts—led by intellectuals. Marcuse, along with Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon and other radical intellectuals, proposed that elements of the lumpenproletariat are potentially leading forces in

14560-694: The Kingdom of Prussia , Marx studied at the universities of Bonn , Berlin , and Jena , and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian , he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, who became his closest friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in

14784-479: The Manuscripts had been influenced by some inconsistent ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Accordingly, Marx recognised the need to break with Feuerbach's philosophy in favour of historical materialism, thus a year later (in April 1845) after moving from Paris to Brussels, Marx wrote his eleven " Theses on Feuerbach ". The "Theses on Feuerbach" are best known for Thesis 11, which states that "philosophers have only interpreted

15008-1008: The Rwandan genocide , the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi , who recruited among the poorer elements of the population, started to draw a " lumpenproletariat of street boys ". The various Serbian militias of the Bosnian War such as the Serb Volunteer Guard and the White Eagles were described as recruiting among the lumpenproletariat. Eighty percent of the Bosnian Serb paramilitary troops were said to be criminals, and Croat and Bosnian units similarly drew criminals into their ranks. In Darfur , some Janjaweed were convicts recruited in prison or bandits who joined governmental forces. Marc Lavergne, author of Le Soudan contemporain , described them as

15232-549: The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China . Theoretical variants such as Leninism , Marxism–Leninism , Trotskyism , and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has had a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and capital , and he is often cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science . Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg . He

15456-486: The Tribune discharged all its correspondents in Europe except Marx and B. Taylor, and reduced Marx to a weekly article. Between September and November 1860, only five were published. After a six-month interval, Marx resumed contributions from September 1861 until March 1862, when Dana wrote to inform him that there was no longer space in the Tribune for reports from London, due to American domestic affairs. In 1868, Dana set up

15680-427: The deindustrialization of the country. Mark Cowling argued that there is considerable similarity in both definition and function between the lumpenproletariat , as proposed by Marx, and the contemporary theory of the underclass by Charles Murray , an American conservative political scientist. Although Murray and Richard Herrnstein did not use the term in their 1994 book The Bell Curve , Malcolm Browne noted in

15904-471: The imperial period the lumpenproletariat —especially prostitutes and pimps—was not only a "political-moral problem, but also an objective, biological danger to the health of society." Karl Kautsky argued in 1890 that it is the lumpenproletariat and not the "militant industrial proletariat" that mostly suffer from alcoholism . August Bebel , pre-World War I leader of the SPD, linked anti-Semitic proletarians to

16128-593: The lumpen-proletariat (or the "disreputable poor") by their unemployment and receipt of welfare benefits. He concluded that "while no significant effects of class can be found using a neo-Marxist conception of class, gradational measures of class (occupation and education) ... Measures of disreputable poverty—unemployment and welfare status [recipiency]—are relatively strong correlates of violent behavior." He explained: Several terms have been coined in imitation of lumpenproletariat such as: Marxist philosophy Marxist theorist Louis Althusser , for example, defined

16352-461: The lumpenproletariat and "and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallised the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution ." Thoburn writes that for him, the lumpenproletariat represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism." Ann Robertson notes that Bakunin believed that "inherent in humanity is a natural essence which can be suppressed but never entirely extinguished. Those in society who are more distant from

16576-448: The lumpenproletariat and were, therefore, subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation. Ken Gelder noted that in cultural studies, subcultures are "often positioned outside of class, closer in kind to Marx's lumpenproletariat , lacking social consciousness, self-absorbed or self-interested, at a distance from organised or sanctioned forms of labour, and so on." In Ukraine, titushky , pro- Viktor Yanukovych thugs active during

16800-533: The lumpenproletariat as the former failed to develop class consciousness, which led to a racial, and not social, explanation of economic inequality. Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to recruit lumpenproletariat elements " opportunism ". In 1925 Nikolai Bukharin described the lumpenproletariat as being characterized by "shiftlessness, lack of discipline, hatred of the old, but impotence to construct anything new, an individualistic declassed 'personality' whose actions are based only on foolish caprices." In

17024-459: The lumpenproletariat as: They used the term exclusively with negative connotations, although their works lack "consistent and clearly reasoned definition" of the term. They used the term in various publications "for diverse purposes and on several levels of meaning." Hal Draper suggested that the concept has its roots in Young Hegelian thought and possibly in G.W.F. Hegel 's Elements of

17248-424: The lumpenproletariat in his writings of the revolutionary turmoil in France between 1848 and 1852: The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1850) and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852). In The Class Struggles he describes the finance aristocracy of Louis Philippe I and his July Monarchy (1830–1848) as lumpenproletarian: "In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy

17472-427: The lumpenproletariat , "Marx was combating the established view that the entire working class was a dangerous and immoral element. He drew a line between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat to defend the moral character of the former." The first collaborative work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to feature the term lumpenproletariat is The German Ideology , written in 1845–46. They used it to describe

17696-535: The plebs (plebeians) of ancient Rome who were midway between freemen and slaves , never becoming more than a "proletarian rabble [ lumpenproletariat ]" and Max Stirner 's "self-professed radical constituency of the Lumpen or ragamuffin." The first work written solely by Marx to mention the term was an article published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in November 1848 which described the lumpenproletariat as

17920-412: The " epistemological break " between the "young Marx" and the "mature Marx" was such that no comparisons could be done between both works, marking a shift to a "scientific theory" of society. In 1844–1845, when Marx was starting to settle his account with Hegel and the Young Hegelians in his writings, he critiqued the Young Hegelians for limiting the horizon of their critique to religion and not taking up

18144-500: The "case of lumpenproletariat reformatories suggests that anti-state resistance from members of the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC rhetoric because it validated claims about the devastating effects of the old society and the transformative power of socialist 'truth'." By the early 1970s some radicals deviated from the orthodox Marxist viewpoint that the lumpenproletariat lacks significant revolutionary potential. Herbert Marcuse , an American philosopher and sociologist of

18368-537: The "dangerous class" and the "social scum", Marx and Engels wrote: In an article analyzing the June 1848 events in Paris Engels wrote of the gardes mobiles , a militia which suppressed the workers' uprising: "The organized lumpenproletariat had given battle to the working proletariat. It had, as was to be expected, put itself at the disposal of the bourgeoisie." Thoburn notes that Marx makes his most detailed descriptions of

18592-508: The 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels ) and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism , in the culmination of his intellectual endeavours. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism , have had enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history. Born in Trier in

18816-512: The 1871 Civil War in France which concerned the Paris Commune and acclaimed it as the first " dictatorship of the proletariat ", etc.) Marx's philosophy is thus inextricably linked to his critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement , such as the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program or The Communist Manifesto , written with Engels (who

19040-499: The 1960s, would define it as " class struggle in theory". Marx's movement away from university philosophy and towards the workers' movement is thus inextricably linked to his rupture with his earlier writings, which pushed Marxist commentators to speak of a "young Marx" and a "mature Marx", although the nature of this cut poses problems. A year before the Revolutions of 1848 , Marx and Engels thus wrote The Communist Manifesto , which

19264-469: The Aristotlean position that law or principle is something implicit in a thing, a potentiality which is not actual but which is in the process of becoming actual. This means that if we want to know the principle governing something, we have to observe its typical life-process and figure out its characteristic behavior. Observing an acorn on its own, we can never deduce that it is an oak tree. To figure out what

19488-529: The Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each time he was acquitted. Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed and the king, Frederick William IV , introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters, who implemented counterrevolutionary measures to expunge left-wing and other revolutionary elements from

19712-581: The Collected Works' thirty-fourth volume consists of the surviving fragments of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1864 , which represented a third draft for Das Kapital , and a large portion of which is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Das Kapital , volume I. A German-language abridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published in 1905 and in 1910. This abridged edition

19936-603: The Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and in 1863 was forced to withdraw as a writer for the Tribune . In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Although Marx won this contest,

20160-496: The Critique of Political Economy stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work – Das Kapital and the Theories of Surplus Value , which discussed and critiqued the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo . Theories of Surplus Value is often referred to as the fourth volume of Das Kapital and constitutes one of

20384-497: The French socialists (especially Claude Henri St. Simon and Charles Fourier ) and the history of France. The study of, and critique, of political economy is a project that Marx would pursue for the rest of his life and would result in his major economic work—the three-volume series called Das Kapital . Marxism is based in large part on three influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism and British political economy. Together with his earlier study of Hegel's dialectics,

20608-526: The German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment , interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire . A classical liberal , he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy . In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to

20832-475: The Gotha Programme opposed the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to compromise with the state socialist ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle in the interests of a united socialist party. This work is also notable for another famous Marx quote: " From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ". In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated

21056-735: The Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In 2010s, cow vigilantism in India has been linked by Pavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism" and to "lumpen and self-appointed gau rakshaks " by Bhalchandra Mungekar . Due to a desire to keep clean the hands of the larger public, paramilitary groups are often used to commit atrocities and they often recruit mainly among criminals, said to be used to violence and brutality and wanting to enjoy an occasion to loot. The lumpenproletariat has been described as being more likely to adhere to doctrines calling for ethnic cleansing and to organize in militias. During

21280-669: The Inspector General of the West Bengal Police , claimed in 1973 that the Maoist Naxalite rebels in India were made of "some intellectuals and lumpen proletariat. Their main target was policemen—and they thought that if the police force could be torn apart, so could society." Political scientist Atul Kohli claimed in his 2001 book that "variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years", especially

21504-462: The Jewish Question ", the latter introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of communism. Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful, largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine 's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria , leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies (Ruge nevertheless refused to fund

21728-560: The Kronstadt rebellion and wider questions posed around the perceived, “amoral” methods of the Bolsheviks. Critics believed these methods seemed to emulate the Jesuit maxim that the “ ends justifies the means ”. Trotsky argued that Marxism situated the foundation of morality as a product of society to serve social interests rather than “eternal moral truths” proclaimed by institutional religions. On

21952-536: The Mittelstrasse. During the first term, Marx attended lectures of Eduard Gans (who represented the progressive Hegelian standpoint, elaborated on rational development in history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the importance of social question) and of Karl von Savigny (who represented the Historical School of Law ). Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy and looked for

22176-524: The Philosophy of Right . While Bussard believes that the idea was "at one and the same time, a hybrid of new social attitudes which crystallised in France, England and Germany, as well as an extension of more traditional, pre-nineteenth-century views of the lower classes." Bussard noted that they often used the term as a "kind of sociological profanity" and contrasted between it and "working and thinking" proletariat . According to Michael Denning by identifying

22400-446: The SPD and its newspaper Vorwärts to the lumpenproletariat working in collusion with the secret police. Historian Richard J. Evans argued that the SPD, thus, lost touch with the "militancy of the classes which it claimed to represent, a militancy which found expression in frequent outbursts of spontaneous collective protest, both political and industrial, at moments of high social and political tension." For many German socialists in

22624-541: The Soviet nomenclature , as a declassed ( déclassé ) group. The term " underclass " is considered to be the modern synonym of lumpenproleteriat . Scholars note its negative connotations. Economist Richard McGahey, writing for the New York Times in 1982, noted that it is one of the older terms in a "long line of labels that stigmatize poor people for their poverty by focusing exclusively on individual characteristics." He listed

22848-627: The State apparatus (the peasants are scattered throughout the countryside, the lumpenproletariat simply refuses to obey the laws) are accordingly natural leaders". Bakunin stated: Robert Ritter , the head of Nazi Germany's efforts to track the genealogies of the Romani , considered them a "highly inferior Lumpenproletariat " as they were "parasites who lacked ambition and many of them had become habitual criminals." The Romani were seen in post-World War II communist-ruled eastern and central Europe as an example of

23072-559: The Trier Tavern Club drinking society ( German : Landsmannschaft der Treveraner ) where many ideas were discussed and at one point he served as the club's co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps . Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force

23296-429: The Young Hegelians. Marx moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ( Rhineland News ), expressing his early views on socialism and his developing interest in economics. Marx criticised right-wing European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movements, whom he thought ineffective or counter-productive. The newspaper attracted

23520-467: The Young Lords Party stated that "it's a law of revolution that the most oppressed group takes the leadership position" (p. 42) and that the lumpen would be the immediate focus of the party's organizing efforts in liberating all oppressed peoples. Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal of the lumpenproletariat showed the limitations of his theory of economic determinism and argued that

23744-409: The acorn is - and also what the oak tree is - we have to observe the line of development from one to the other. (c) The phenomena of history arise from a whole with an essence which undergoes transformation of form and which has an end or telos. For Hegel, the essence of humanity is freedom, and the telos of that essence is the actualization of that freedom. Like Aristotle, Hegel believes the essence of

23968-406: The actual is both itself and its opposite (as potential). And this potential (freedom) is never inert but constantly exerts an impulse toward change. Marx did not study directly with Hegel, but after Hegel died Marx studied under one of Hegel's pupils, Bruno Bauer , a leader of the circle of Young Hegelians to whom Marx attached himself. However, Marx and Engels came to disagree with Bruno Bauer and

24192-572: The age of 16, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx also joined

24416-416: The alienation described by the Young Hegelians was in fact the result of the structure of the economy itself. Furthermore, he criticized Feuerbach's conception of human nature in his sixth thesis on Feuerbach as an abstract "kind" which incarnated itself in each singular individual: "Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man ( menschliche Wesen , human nature). But the essence of man

24640-563: The apocalyptic images which made it a "society of transparence", "without contradiction" nor ideology. Balibar observes that, in the end, Althusser enjoined the most sober definition of communism, exposed by Marx in The German Ideology : Communism is "not a state of the future, but the real movement which destroys the existing state of being.". In 1938, Trotsky had written “Their Morals and Ours” which consisted of ethical polemics in response to criticisms around his actions concerning

24864-641: The attention of the Prussian government censors , who checked every issue for seditious material before printing, which Marx lamented: "Our newspaper has to be presented to the police to be sniffed at, and if the police nose smells anything un-Christian or un-Prussian, the newspaper is not allowed to appear". After the Rheinische Zeitung published an article strongly criticising the Russian monarchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned and Prussia's government complied in 1843. In 1843, Marx became co-editor of

25088-451: The birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the Jahrbücher was dominated by the latter and the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin . Marx contributed two essays to the paper, " Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right " and " On

25312-454: The brother who's robbing banks, who's not politically conscious" in his definition of the lumpenproletariat . Newton called them "street brothers", alienated from the system of oppression in the US, and sought to recruit them into the party. Their strategy was a controversial one. Chris Booker and Errol Henderson argued that problems such as "a lack of discipline, a tendency toward violence, the importation of street culture, including crime, and

25536-448: The capitalist class and the working-class... It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity "labour-power" face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it

25760-411: The change mostly in mechanical terms using principles of genetics and natural selection. The historical process, however, never attempts to preserve an essence in the first place. Rather, it develops an essence through successive forms. This means that at any moment on the path of historical change, there is a contradiction between what exists and what is in the process of coming-to-be. The realization of

25984-669: The citizenry. Still, Marx was always drawn back to his studies where he sought "to understand the inner workings of capitalism". An outline of "Marxism" had definitely formed in the mind of Karl Marx by late 1844. Indeed, many features of the Marxist view of the world had been worked out in great detail, but Marx needed to write down all of the details of his world view to further clarify the new critique of political economy in his own mind. Accordingly, Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts . These manuscripts covered numerous topics, detailing Marx's concept of alienated labour . By

26208-577: The city for the rest of his life. The headquarters of the Communist League also moved to London. However, in the winter of 1849–1850, a split within the ranks of the Communist League occurred when a faction within it led by August Willich and Karl Schapper began agitating for an immediate uprising. Willich and Schapper believed that once the Communist League had initiated the uprising, the entire working class from across Europe would rise "spontaneously" to join it, thus creating revolution across Europe. Marx and Engels protested that such an unplanned uprising on

26432-404: The claim that humankind itself can adapt society to its own purposes rather than adapting themselves to it. Natural and historical change, according to Hegel, have two different kinds of essences. Organic natural entities develop through a straightforward process, relatively simple to comprehend at least in outline. Historical development, however, is a more complex process. Its specific difference

26656-508: The colonial status quo for liberation." He described them as "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people." He was not uncritical of the lumpenproletariat due to their supposed unpredictability due to "their ignorance and incomprehension." Colonial forces could make a use of them as hired soldiers. Fanon's use of the term prompted debates and studies, including by Pierre Bourdieu and Charles van Onselen . The African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral

26880-421: The communist revolution does not end with the negation of individual liberty and equality (" collectivism " ), but with the "negation of the negation": "individual property" in the capitalist regime is in fact the "expropriation of the immediate producers." "Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor,

27104-463: The conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie ) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat ) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by

27328-429: The context of the revolutions of 1848 . They dismissed the revolutionary potential of the Lumpenproletariat and contrasted it with the proletariat . Among other groups, criminals, vagabonds , and prostitutes are usually included in this category. The Social Democratic Party of Germany made wide use of the term by the turn of the century . Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky followed Marx's arguments and dismissed

27552-550: The contrary, the latter is the vehicle realizing the former. Hegel consistently lays more stress on passion than on the more historically specifiable interests of men. Marx will reverse this priority. (3) Difference between natural and historical change Hegel distinguishes as Aristotle did not between the application of organic, essentialist categories to the realm of human history and the realm of organic nature. According to Hegel, human history strives toward perfectibility, but nature does not. Marx deepens and expands this idea into

27776-631: The country. Consequently, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was soon suppressed, and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May 1849. Marx returned to Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counterrevolution and a cholera epidemic, and was soon expelled by the city authorities, who considered him a political threat. With his wife Jenny expecting their fourth child and with Marx not able to move back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London. Marx moved to London in early June 1849 and would remain based in

28000-415: The critique of the state and civil society as paramount. Indeed, in 1844, by the look of Marx's writings in that period (most famous of which is the " Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ", a text that most explicitly elaborated his theory of alienation ), Marx's thinking could have taken at least three possible courses: the study of law, religion, and the state; the study of natural philosophy; and

28224-402: The deleterious influences which are assailing it [the rural commune] from all sides". Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that "normal conditions of spontaneous development" of the rural commune could exist. However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich he points out that "at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from

28448-764: The development and primarily the class struggle but this did not mean all means are permissible. There are endless interpretations of the "philosophy of Marx", from the interior of the Marxist movement as well as in its exterior. Although some have separated Marx's works between a " young Marx " (in particular the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ) and a "mature Marx" or also by separating it into purely philosophical works, economics works and political and historical interventions, Étienne Balibar has pointed out that Marx's works can be divided into "economic works" ( Das Kapital , 1867), "philosophical works" and "historical works" ( The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ,

28672-418: The development of their theory of economics and historical progression. After the "failures" of 1848, the revolutionary impetus appeared spent and not to be renewed without an economic recession. Contention arose between Marx and his fellow communists, whom he denounced as "adventurists". Marx deemed it fanciful to propose that "will power" could be sufficient to create the revolutionary conditions when in reality

28896-505: The differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father Ludwig von Westphalen (a liberal aristocrat) and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, they married in a Protestant church in Kreuznach . In October 1836, Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty of law and renting a room in

29120-406: The early period in London, Marx committed himself almost exclusively to his studies, such that his family endured extreme poverty. His main source of income was Engels, whose own source was his wealthy industrialist father. In Prussia as editor of his own newspaper, and contributor to others ideologically aligned, Marx could reach his audience, the working classes. In London, without finances to run

29344-435: The economic component was the necessary requisite. The recession in the United States' economy in 1852 gave Marx and Engels grounds for optimism for revolutionary activity, yet this economy was seen as too immature for a capitalist revolution. Open territories on America's western frontier dissipated the forces of social unrest. Moreover, any economic crisis arising in the United States would not lead to revolutionary contagion of

29568-476: The effects of which led to his being exempted from Prussian military service. In later life whilst working on Das Kapital (which he never completed), Marx suffered from a trio of afflictions. A liver ailment, probably hereditary, was aggravated by overwork, a bad diet, and lack of sleep. Inflammation of the eyes was induced by too much work at night. A third affliction, eruption of carbuncles or boils, "was probably brought on by general physical debility to which

29792-442: The efforts and will power of a handful of men. They are instead brought about through a scientific analysis of economic conditions of society and by moving toward revolution through different stages of social development. In the present stage of development ( circa 1850), following the defeat of the uprisings across Europe in 1848 he felt that the Communist League should encourage the working class to unite with progressive elements of

30016-438: The essence of Spirit. (4) Contradiction In the development of a natural thing, there is by and large no contradiction between the process of development and the way that development must appear. So the transition from an acorn, to an oak, to an acorn again occurs in a relatively uninterrupted flow of the acorn back to itself again. When change in the essence takes place, as it does in the process of evolution, we can understand

30240-409: The first comprehensive treatises on the history of economic thought . In 1867, the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which critically analysed capital. Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the mode of production from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, with topics such as the growth of wage labour ,

30464-479: The first period of European colonialism ) and then through the globalization of the capitalist sphere. Such individual rights were the symmetric of the "right for the labourer" to "freely" sell his labor force on the marketplace through juridical contracts, and worked in the same time as an ideological means to discompose the collective grouping of producers required by the Industrial Revolution : thus, in

30688-442: The following synonyms: "underclass", "undeserving poor", and " culture of poverty ". Another synonym is " riff-raff ". The word is used in some languages as a pejorative. In English it may be used in an informal disapproving manner to "describe people who are not clever or well educated, and who are not interested in changing or improving their situation." According to historian Robert Bussard, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed

30912-503: The forces of production and incapable of having a working-class consciousness." Svetlana Stephenson notes that the Soviet state "for all its ideology of assistance, cooperation and social responsibility, was ready to descend on them with all its might." Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that the lumpenproletariat ( Chinese : 游民无产者 , pinyin : yóumín wúchǎnzhě ) in China is a legacy of the country's "colonial and semi-colonial status" which forced

31136-417: The forest (this right was at the point of being criminalized and privatized by the state). It was Marx's inability to penetrate beneath the legal and polemical surface of the latter issue to its materialist, economic, and social roots that prompted him to critically study political economy. Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history, otherwise known as historical materialism (this term

31360-565: The foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as The Communist Manifesto . While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the secret radical organisation League of the Just . As noted above, Marx thought the League to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward

31584-580: The founding book of individualist anarchism . Max Stirner claimed that all ideals were inherently alienating , and that replacing God with Humanity, as did Ludwig Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity (1841), was not sufficient. According to Stirner, any ideals, God, Humanity, the Nation , or even the Revolution alienated the "Ego". Marx also criticized Proudhon , who had become famous with his cry " Property

31808-401: The group and "its possible integration into the politics of populism as an 'absolute outside' that threatens the coherence of ideological identifications." Mark Cowling argues that the "concept is being used for its political impact rather than because it provides good explanations" and that its political impact is "pernicious" and an "obstacle to clear analysis." Laura Pulido argues that there is

32032-552: The growing cadre of members of the League of the Just now seeking home in Brussels. Later, Mary Burns , Engels' long-time companion, left Manchester, England to join Engels in Brussels. In mid-July 1845, Marx and Engels left Brussels for England to visit the leaders of the Chartists , a working-class movement in Britain. This was Marx's first trip to England and Engels was an ideal guide for

32256-468: The idea that the grounds of property is labour ; and finally Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . "Vulgar Marxism" (or codified dialectical materialism ) was seen as little other than a variety of economic determinism , with the alleged determination of the ideological superstructure by the economical infrastructure . Marx developed a comprehensive, theoretical understanding of political reality early in his intellectual and activist career by means of

32480-420: The idea that world history progresses through stages, (3) the difference between natural and historical (dialectical) change, and (4) the idea that dialectical change proceeds through contradictions in the thing itself. (1) Aristotelian organicism and essentialism (a) Hegel adopts the position that chance is not the basis of phenomena and that events are governed by laws. Some have falsely attributed to Hegel

32704-514: The inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach was his view of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely

32928-489: The influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin . In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery . Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict . In the capitalist mode of production , this manifests itself in

33152-409: The journalist Charles Dana , who was editor-in-chief. Dana, a fourierist and an abolitionist , was Marx's contact. The Tribune was a vehicle for Marx to reach a transatlantic public, such as for his "hidden warfare" against Henry Charles Carey . The journal had wide working-class appeal from its foundation; at two cents, it was inexpensive; and, with about 50,000 copies per issue, its circulation

33376-452: The language in which exploitation masks itself and as the one in which the exploited class struggle express itself: more than a truth or an illusion, it is therefore a stake ". Das Kapital ironizes on the "pompous catalogue of the human rights" in comparison to the "modest Magna Charta of a day work limited by law": The creation of a normal working-day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between

33600-423: The largest local employer, which refused to hire socialists. In 1966 sociologist David Matza cited disorder and violence as two of the most prominent characteristics of the disreputable poor. In his 1977 book Class, State, and Crime , Marxist historian Richard Quinney defined lumpen crimes (or "predatory crimes") as those intended for purely personal profit. In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield defined

33824-432: The latter spanning volumes 30–34 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels . Specifically, Theories of Surplus Value runs from the latter part of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the end of their thirty-second volume; meanwhile, the larger Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 run from the start of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the first half of their thirty-fourth volume. The latter half of

34048-467: The margins of society, could bring down the great cities, sap resources and strength from the entire society and, lacking the usual means to survive, prey upon those who possess them." According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk the tough-on-crime stance on African Americans has been caused by political manipulation of public fears of a lumpen underclass threatening the majority as African Americans were perceived to have turned to crime due to losing in

34272-501: The mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its "secret" or "underground" orientation and operate in the open as a political party. Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June 1847 the League was reorganised by its membership into a new open "above ground" political society that appealed directly to

34496-425: The means of production". In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past. He wrote that "the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak,

34720-482: The more moderate Young Hegelians ) is still more or less the case in the 21st century, as many Marxists would claim, then Marxist theory is in fact the practical continuation of the philosophical tradition, while much of philosophy is still politically irrelevant. Many critics , both non-Marxist and some Marxist philosophers, feel that this is too quick a dismissal of the post-Marxian philosophical tradition. Much sophisticated and important thought has taken place after

34944-441: The newspaper featured Marx as a primary writer and the dominant editorial influence. Despite contributions by fellow members of the Communist League, according to Friedrich Engels it remained "a simple dictatorship by Marx". Whilst editor of the paper, Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were regularly harassed by the police and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions, facing various allegations including insulting

35168-470: The older economies of individual European nations, which were closed systems bounded by their national borders. When the so-called Panic of 1857 in the United States spread globally, it broke all economic theory models, and was the first truly global economic crisis. Marx continued to write articles for the New York Daily Tribune as long as he was sure that the Tribune ' s editorial policy

35392-819: The organized crime syndicates, "can become revolutionary given proper leadership". According to Luo Ruiqing , the Minister of Public Security , the lumpenproletariat population consisted of sex workers, vagrant gangs, and theft rings and were political problems that threatened the internal security of China. Following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), lumpenproletariat were interned into government-run reeducation centers. Some 500,000 people were interned into 920 such centers by 1953. Historian Aminda Smith notes that

35616-448: The other hand, he regarded it as farcical to assert that an end could justify any criminal means and viewed this to be a distorted representation of the Jesuit maxim. Instead, Trotsky believed that the means and ends frequently “exchanged places” as when democracy is sought by the working class as an instrument to actualize socialism. He also viewed revolution to be deducible from the laws of

35840-470: The part of the Communist League was "adventuristic" and would be suicide for the Communist League. Such an uprising as that recommended by the Schapper/Willich group would easily be crushed by the police and the armed forces of the reactionary governments of Europe. Marx maintained that this would spell doom for the Communist League itself, arguing that changes in society are not achieved overnight through

36064-489: The passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death. In place of the pompous catalogue of the "inalienable rights of man" comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear "when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins. Quantum mutatus ab illo! [How changed from what he/it was!]" But

36288-410: The philosophy as " class struggle in theory", thus radically separating himself from those who claimed philosophers could adopt a " God's eye view " as a purely neutral judge. The philosopher Étienne Balibar wrote in 1996 that "there is no Marxist philosophy and there never will be; on the other hand, Marx is more important for philosophy than ever before." So even the existence of Marxist philosophy

36512-471: The position that phenomena are governed by transcendent, supersensible ideas that ground them. On the contrary, Hegel argues for the organic unity between universal and particular. Particulars are not mere token types of universals; rather, they relate to each other as a part relates to a whole. This latter has import for Marx's own conception of law and necessity. (b) In rejecting the idea that laws merely describe or independently ground phenomena, Hegel revives

36736-513: The possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir . While admitting that Russia's rural "commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia", Marx also warned that in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage it "would first be necessary to eliminate

36960-528: The printing of 3,000 copies of the book in the Russian language, which was published on 27 March 1872. By the autumn of 1871, the entire first edition of the German-language edition of Das Kapital had been sold out and a second edition was published. Volumes II and III of Das Kapital remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life. Both volumes were published by Engels after Marx's death. Volume II of Das Kapital

37184-438: The proletariat , and victory of the proletariat over the bourgeois state. The 1850s and 1860s may be said to mark a philosophical boundary distinguishing the young Marx 's Hegelian idealism and the more mature Marx 's scientific ideology associated with structural Marxism . However, not all scholars accept this distinction. For Marx and Engels, their experience of the Revolutions of 1848 to 1849 were formative in

37408-404: The proletariat against the other": In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx identified Napoleon III as the "Chief of the Lumpenproletariat ", a claim he made repeatedly. He argued that he bought his supporters with "gifts and loans, these were the limits of the financial science of the lumpenproletariat , both the low and the exalted. Never had a President speculated more stupidly on

37632-584: The publication of further issues and his friendship with Marx broke down). After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, Vorwärts! ( Forward! ). Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just , a utopian socialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings but did not join. In Vorwärts! , Marx refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism , at

37856-477: The reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give ontological priority to what he called the "real life process" of real human beings, as he and Engels said in The German Ideology (1846): In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That

38080-510: The rest of the Young Hegelians about socialism and also about the usage of Hegel's dialectic. Having achieved his thesis on the Difference of natural philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus in 1841, the young Marx progressively broke away with the Prussian university and its teachings impregnated by German Idealism ( Kant , Fichte , Schelling and Hegel). Along with Engels, who observed

38304-466: The revolutionary potential of the group, while Mao Zedong argued that proper leadership could utilize it. The word Lumpenproletariat , popularized in the West by Frantz Fanon 's The Wretched of the Earth in the 1960s, has been adopted as a sociological term. However, what some consider to be its vagueness and its history as a term of abuse has led to some criticism. Some revolutionary groups, most notably

38528-531: The revolutionary potential of the group. Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers put on the lumpenproletariat was the party's hallmark. Its co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton viewed the African-American lumpenproletariat as a potential organized threat if the party did not mobilize them. Seale included "the brother who's pimping, the brother who's hustling, the unemployed, the downtrodden,

38752-400: The rights of the "egoistic individual", ultimately based on the "right to private property", which economism deduced from its own implicit "philosophy of the subject", which asserts the preeminence of an individual and universal subject over social relations. On the other hand, Marx also criticized Bentham 's utilitarianism . Alongside Freud , Nietzsche , and Durkheim , Marx thus takes

38976-401: The rising bourgeoisie to defeat the feudal aristocracy on issues involving demands for governmental reforms, such as a constitutional republic with freely elected assemblies and universal (male) suffrage. In other words, the working class must join with bourgeois and democratic forces to bring about the successful conclusion of the bourgeois revolution before stressing the working-class agenda and

39200-474: The root is lump ("knave"), not lumpen . Bussard noted that the meaning of lump shifted from being a person dressed in rags in the 17th century to knavery in the 19th century. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as "the lowest stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and

39424-619: The same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe. On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence , beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 , convincing Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history. Soon, Marx and Engels were collaborating on

39648-470: The same time that the Industrial Era requires masses to concentrate themselves in factories and in cities , the individualist, "bourgeois" ideology separated themselves as competing homo economicus . Marx's critique of the ideology of the human rights thus departs from the counterrevolutionary critique by Edmund Burke , who dismissed the "rights of Man" in favour of the "rights of the individual": it

39872-481: The same, whether it was presented as 'epistemological' or as 'philosophical': it was in the act of rendering intelligible a communist policy , or not." ( Ecrits pour Althusser , 1991, p.98). However, "Althusser never ceased to put in question the images of communism that Marxist theory and ideology carried on: but he did it in the name of communism itself." Althusser thus criticized the evolutionist image which made of communism an ultimate stage of history, as well as

40096-481: The slums" to help with his Red Terror . Laura Pulido argues that, historically, the lumpenproletariat in the US has mostly been African American due to the nation being racially constituted. It is primarily indicated by the high unemployment and incarceration rates among African Americans. The Black Panther Party , most prominent revolutionary socialists in post-war US, "thought of much of their following as lumpenproletarian ." They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding

40320-426: The spring of 1845, his continued study of political economy, capital and capitalism had led Marx to the belief that the new critique of political economy he was espousing—that of scientific socialism —needed to be built on the base of a thoroughly developed materialistic view of the world. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 had been written between April and August 1844, but soon Marx recognised that

40544-400: The state, and foreign trade, and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939, under the title Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (English: Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy ). In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as

40768-465: The struggle; they considered the lumpen to be "the class in our nation which for years and years have not been able to find jobs, and are forced to be drug addicts, prostitutes, etc." (p. 20) in the face of the capitalist system the Party considered an enemy. Crucial to the party's view on the lumpen is that, unlike criticisms of the lumpenproletariat around a perceived lack of productivity and organization,

40992-456: The study of political economy . He chose the last as the predominant focus of his studies for the rest of his life, largely on account of his previous experience as the editor of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung on whose pages he fought for freedom of expression against Prussian censorship and made a rather idealist, legal defense for the Moselle peasants' customary right of collecting wood in

41216-443: The studying that Marx did during this time in Paris meant that all major components of "Marxism" were in place by the autumn of 1844. Marx was constantly being pulled away from his critique of political economy—not only by the usual daily demands of the time, but additionally by editing a radical newspaper and later by organising and directing the efforts of a political party during years of potentially revolutionary popular uprisings of

41440-503: The stupidity of the masses." For Marx, the lumpenproletariat represented those who were "corrupt, reactionary and without a clear sense of class-consciousness." He wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire : In Capital (1867) Marx claimed legislation which turned soldiers and peasants "en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances." By this he deviated from his focus on

41664-466: The time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism. Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals that became known as the Revolutions of 1848 . In France, a revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second Republic . Marx

41888-636: The title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State . Marx and von Westphalen had seven children together, but partly owing to the poor conditions in which they lived whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood. Their children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–1852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). According to his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue , Marx

42112-593: The transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, " The Civil War in France ",

42336-449: The transformation of the workplace, capital accumulation , competition, the banking system, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and land-rents, as well as how waged labour continually reproduce the rule of capital. Marx proposes that the driving force of capital is in the exploitation of labour , whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value . Demand for a Russian language edition of Das Kapital soon led to

42560-580: The trip. Engels had already spent two years living in Manchester from November 1842 to August 1844. Not only did Engels already know the English language, but he had also developed a close relationship with many Chartist leaders. Indeed, Engels was serving as a reporter for many Chartist and socialist English newspapers. Marx used the trip as an opportunity to examine the economic resources available for study in various libraries in London and Manchester. In collaboration with Engels, Marx also set about writing

42784-501: The unemployed, who lacked awareness of their collective interest as an oppressed class." In modern usage, it is commonly defined to include the chronically unemployed, the homeless, and career criminals . The Communist Party USA website defines it as follows: In English translations of Marx and Engels, lumpenproletariat has sometimes been rendered as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin", and "ragged-proletariat". It has been described by some scholars and theorists, as well as

43008-471: The use of weapons" by Black Panthers was caused by the disproportionately high membership of the lumpenproletariat in their ranks. The Young Lords Party adopted similar views to the Black Panther Party, believing in the potential of the lumpen. They developed a Lumpen Organization within their larger organization with the goal of enlisting the people considered the lumpenproletariat, or "lumpen", in

43232-432: The vicious and degenerate behavior of the lumpenproletariat in his writings on France. Instead he described the lumpenproletariat as part of the what he called an " industrial reserve army ", which capitalists used as times required. Thus "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes" and other lumpenproletariat formed an element within the "surplus population" in a capitalist system. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)

43456-520: The working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation . Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures of the modern era , and his work has been both lauded and criticised . Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including

43680-453: The working classes. This new open political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League . In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League . Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto

43904-473: The world in various ways, the point is to change it". This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory), and, overall, philosophy (for putting abstract reality above the physical world). It thus introduced the first glimpse at Marx's historical materialism , an argument that the world is changed not by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice. In 1845, after receiving

44128-468: The writing of Marx and Engels ; much or perhaps even all of it has been influenced, subtly or overtly, by Marxism. Simply dismissing all philosophy as sophistry might condemn Marxism to a simplistic empiricism or economism , crippling it in practice and making it comically simplistic at the level of theory. Nonetheless, the force of Marx's opposition to Hegelian idealism and to any "philosophy" divorced from political practice remains powerful even to

44352-470: Was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance. In October 1835 at

44576-526: Was a loving father. In 1962, there were allegations that Marx fathered a son, Freddy, out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth , but the claim is disputed for lack of documented evidence. Helene Demuth was also largely entrusted as a confidante. In her obituary, penned by Friedrich Engels , her role is revealed as: "Marx took counsel of Helena Demuth, not only in difficult and intricate party matters, but even in respect of his economical writings". Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting

44800-522: Was also racked by an internal struggle between its members, some of whom followed Marx while others followed the Schapper/Willich faction. The issues in this internal split were the same issues raised in the internal split within the Communist League, but Marx lost the fight with the Schapper/Willich faction within the German Workers' Educational Society and on 17 September 1850 resigned from the Society. In

45024-399: Was based solely on materialism as the sole motor force in history. German Ideology is written in a humorously satirical form, but even this satirical form did not save the work from censorship. Like so many other early writings of his, German Ideology would not be published in Marx's lifetime and was published only in 1932. After completing German Ideology , Marx turned to a work that

45248-474: Was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier , an ancient city then part of the Kingdom of Prussia 's Province of the Lower Rhine . Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted formally to Christianity before his birth. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi , while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father, as

45472-498: Was coined by Jonah Goldberg in 2015 to describe Trump's "biggest fans", who he believed "are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause" in the same way the lumpenproletariat was not to be relied upon for a socialist revolution. Daniel Henninger used the term as well in The Wall Street Journal . Francis Levy compared " basket of deplorables ", Hillary Clinton 's phrase to characterize some Trump supporters during

45696-423: Was coined by Engels and popularised by Karl Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov ), in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy : Karl Marx Karl Marx ( German: [kaʁl ˈmaʁks] ; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born philosopher , political theorist, economist , historian, sociologist , journalist, and revolutionary socialist . His best-known works are

45920-514: Was described as "a daring and original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy". The essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided instead to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena , whose faculty awarded him his Ph.D. in April 1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists , in March 1841 they began plans for

46144-425: Was first published on 21 February 1848. The Communist Manifesto laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism: "The history of all hitherto existing society

46368-537: Was following the lead of Feuerbach. His theory of alienation , developed in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (published in 1932), inspired itself from Feuerbach's critique of the alienation of Man in God through the objectivation of all his inherent characteristics (thus man projected on God all qualities which are in fact man's own quality which defines the " human nature "). But Marx also criticized Feuerbach for being insufficiently materialistic, as Stirner himself had pointed out, and explained that

46592-423: Was forced to flee back to France, where with a new republican government in power he believed that he would be safe. Temporarily settling down in Paris, Marx transferred the Communist League executive headquarters to the city and also set up a German Workers' Club with various German socialists living there. Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848 Marx moved back to Cologne where he began issuing

46816-400: Was intended to clarify his own position regarding "the theory and tactics" of a truly "revolutionary proletarian movement" operating from the standpoint of a truly "scientific materialist" philosophy. This work was intended to draw a distinction between the utopian socialists and Marx's own scientific socialist philosophy. Whereas the utopians believed that people must be persuaded one person at

47040-590: Was never afterward free, exacerbated by an unsuitable lifestyle. The attacks often came with headaches, eye inflammation, neuralgia in the head, and rheumatic pains. A serious nervous disorder appeared in 1877 and protracted insomnia was a consequence, which Marx fought with narcotics. The illness was aggravated by excessive nocturnal work and faulty diet. Marx was fond of highly seasoned dishes, smoked fish, caviare, pickled cucumbers, "none of which are good for liver patients", but he also liked wine and liqueurs and smoked an enormous amount "and since he had no money, it

47264-501: Was observing the Chartist movement ) a year before the Revolutions of 1848 . Both after the defeat of the French socialist movement during Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's 1851 coup and then after the crushing of the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx's thought transformed itself. Marxism's philosophical roots were thus commonly explained as derived from three sources: English political economy , French republicanism and radicalism , and German idealist philosophy. Although this "three sources" model

47488-415: Was one of the first to use lumpenproletariat in their rhetoric, particularly to indicate the scope of their view of a "desirable" working class and exclude the non-respectable poor. By the early 20th century, the German Marxist tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or labor unions as members of the lumpenproletariat . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rioting and violence was often attributed by

47712-403: Was prepared and published by Engels in July 1893 under the name Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital . Volume III of Das Kapital was published a year later in October 1894 under the name Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole . Theories of Surplus Value derived from the sprawling Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 , a second draft for Das Kapital ,

47936-411: Was prepared to an imminent revolution, and ended with the famous cry: " Proletarians of all countries, unite! ". However, Marx's thought changed again following Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte 's December 2, 1851 coup , which put an end to the French Second Republic and created the Second Empire which would last until the 1870 Franco-Prussian War . Marx thereby modified his theory of alienation exposed in

48160-636: Was rarely used in the Soviet Union to describe any portion of the Soviet society because, Hemmerle argues, following the Russian Revolution of 1917 "millions of people passed through economic conditions that bore a resemblance to the traditional meaning of lumpenproletariat ". However, it was used to label labor movements in capitalist countries which were not pro-Soviet. Soviet authorities and scholars instead reserved other terms for their own lumpenproletariat groups, especially "déclassé elements" (деклассированные элементы, deklassirovannye elementy ), and viewed them, like Marx, as "social degenerates, isolated from

48384-520: Was referred to as "Qui Qui, Emperor of China " and another, Laura, was known as " Kakadou " or "the Hottentot ". Marx drank heavily after joining the Trier Tavern Club drinking society in the 1830s, and continued to do so until his death. Marx was afflicted by poor health, what he himself described as "the wretchedness of existence", and various authors have sought to describe and explain it. His biographer Werner Blumenberg attributed it to liver and gall problems which Marx had in 1849 and from which he

48608-524: Was skeptical about the lumpen being used in anti-colonialist liberation revolution. His African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde recruited déclassé , but not lumpenproletariat , groups as the latter were supportive of the Portuguese colonial police, while the former, in the absence of a developed proletariat in Guinea and Cape Verde, played a dynamic role in anti-colonialist struggle. Historian Martin Meredith wrote that Ethiopian ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam used "the lumpen-proletariat of

48832-416: Was sometimes too mistrustful and unjust even to them. His verdicts, not only about enemies but even about friends, were sometimes so harsh that even less sensitive people would take offence ... There must have been few whom he did not criticize like this ... not even Engels was an exception. According to Princeton historian Jerrold Seigel , in his late teens, Marx may have had pneumonia or pleurisy,

49056-440: Was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy. No longer was the Tribune to be a strong abolitionist paper dedicated to a complete Union victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in

49280-449: Was supportive of such activity and having recently received a substantial inheritance from his father (withheld by his uncle Lionel Philips since his father's death in 1838) of either 6,000 or 5,000 francs he allegedly used a third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action. Although the veracity of these allegations is disputed, the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused Marx of it, subsequently arresting him and he

49504-414: Was the result of commodity fetishism or alienation. Some critics have claimed that meant that Marx enforced a strict social determinism which destroyed the possibility of free will . In the same way, following Babeuf , considered one of the founders of communism during the French Revolution , he criticized the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as a "bourgeois declaration" of

49728-489: Was the widest in the United States. Its editorial ethos was progressive and its anti-slavery stance reflected Greeley's. Marx's first article for the paper, on the British parliamentary elections, was published on 21 August 1852. On 21 March 1857, Dana informed Marx that due to the economic recession only one article a week would be paid for, published or not; the others would be paid for only if published. Marx had sent his articles on Tuesdays and Fridays, but, that October,

49952-485: Was translated into English and published in 1951 in London, but the complete unabridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published as the "fourth volume" of Das Kapital in 1963 and 1971 in Moscow. During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined, and he became incapable of the sustained effort that had characterised his previous work. He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His Critique of

50176-586: Was usually bad-quality cigars". From 1863, Marx complained a lot about boils: "These are very frequent with liver patients and may be due to the same causes". The abscesses were so bad that Marx could neither sit nor work upright. According to Blumenberg, Marx's irritability is often found in liver patients: The illness emphasised certain traits in his character. He argued cuttingly, his biting satire did not shrink at insults, and his expressions could be rude and cruel. Though in general Marx had blind faith in his closest friends, nevertheless he himself complained that he

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