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Conflict theories are perspectives in social science that emphasize the social, political or material inequality of a social group, that critique the broad socio-political system, or that otherwise detract from structural functionalism and ideological conservativism. Conflict theories draw attention to power differentials, such as class conflict, and generally contrast historically dominant ideologies. It is therefore a macro level analysis of society. Karl Marx is the father of the social conflict theory, which is a component of the 4 paradigms of sociology.^{[citation needed]}

Certain conflict theories set out to highlight the ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought. Whilst many of these perspectives hold parallels, conflict theory does not refer to a unified school of thought, and should not be confused with, for instance, peace and conflict studies, or any other specific theory of social conflict.

In classical sociology[link]

Of the classical founders of social science, conflict theory is most commonly associated with Karl Marx (1818–1883). Based on a dialectical materialist account of history, Marxism posited that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions leading to its own destruction.^[1] Marx ushered in radical change, advocating proletarian revolution and freedom from the ruling classes. At the same time, Karl Marx was aware that most of the people living in capitalist societies did not see how the system shaped the entire operation of society. Just like how we see private property, or the right to pass that property on to our children as natural, many of members in capitalistic societies see the rich as having earned their wealth through hard work and education, while seeing the poor as lacking in skill and initiative. Marx rejected this type of thinking and termed it false consciousness, explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than the flaws of society. Marx wanted to replace this kind of thinking with something he termed class consciousness, workers' recognition of themselves as a class unified in opposition to capitalist and ultimately to the capitalist system itself. In general, Marx wanted the proletarians to rise up against the capitalist and overthrow the capitalist system.^[2]

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto 1848, ^[3]

In the social productions of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then an era of social revolution begins. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, [A] feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

— Karl Marx A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 1859, ^[4]

Two early conflict theorists were the Polish-Austrian sociologist and political theorist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) and the American sociologist and paleontologist Lester F. Ward (1841–1913). Although Ward and Gumplowicz developed their theories independently they had much in common and approached conflict from a comprehensive anthropological and evolutionary point-of-view as opposed to Marx's rather exclusive focus on economic factors.

Gumplowicz, in Grundriss der Soziologie (Outlines of Sociology, 1884), describes how civilization has been shaped by conflict between cultures and ethnic groups. Gumplowicz theorized that large complex human societies evolved from the war and conquest. Another organizes states around the domination of one group: masters and slaves. Eventually a complex caste system develops.^[5] Horowitz says that Gumplowicz understood conflict in all its forms: "class conflict, race conflict and ethnic conflict", and calls him one of the fathers of Conflict Theory.^[6]

What happened in India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome may sometime happen in modern Europe. European civilization may perish, over flooded by barbaric tribes. But if any one believes that we are safe from such catastrophes he is perhaps yielding to an all too optimistic delusion. There are no barbaric tribes in our neighbourhood to be sure — but let no one be deceived, their instincts lie latent in the populace of European states.

— Gumplowicz (1884), ^[7]

Ward directly attacked and attempted to systematically refute the elite business class's laissez-faire philosophy as espoused by the hugely popular social philosopher Herbert Spencer. Ward's Dynamic Sociology (1883) was an extended thesis on how to reduce conflict and competition in society and thus optimize human progress. At the most basic level Ward saw human nature itself to be deeply conflicted between self-aggrandizement and altruism, between emotion and intellect, and between male and female. These conflicts would be then reflected in society and Ward assumed there had been a "perpetual and vigorous struggle" among various "social forces" that shaped civilization.^[8][9] Ward was more optimistic than Marx and Gumplowicz and believed that it was possible to build on and reform present social structures with the help of sociological analysis.

Durkheim (1858–1917) saw society as a functioning organism. Functionalism concerns "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system,"^[10] The chief form of social conflict that Durkheim addressed was crime. Durkheim saw crime as "a factor in public health, an integral part of all healthy societies."^[11] The collective conscience defines certain acts as "criminal." Crime thus plays a role in the evolution of morality and law: "[it] implies not only that the way remains open to necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly prepares these changes."^[12]

Weber's (1864–1920) approach to conflict is contrasted with that of Marx. While Marx focused on the way individual behavior is conditioned by social structure, Weber emphasized the importance of "social action," i.e., the ability of individuals to affect their social relationships.^[13]

Modern approaches[link]

C. Wright Mills has been called the founder of modern conflict theory.^[14] In Mills's view, social structures are created through conflict between people with differing interests and resources. Individuals and resources, in turn, are influenced by these structures and by the "unequal distribution of power and resources in the society."^[14] The power elite of American society, (i.e., the military–industrial complex) had "emerged from the fusion of the corporate elite, the Pentagon, and the executive branch of government." Mills argued that the interests of this elite were opposed to those of the people. He theorized that the policies of the power elite would result in "increased escalation of conflict, production of weapons of mass destruction, and possibly the annihilation of the human race."^[14]

Gene Sharp (born 21 January 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.^[15] He is known for his extensive writings on nonviolent struggle, which have influenced numerous anti-government resistance movements around the world. In 1983 he founded the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization devoted to studies and promotion of the use of nonviolent action in conflicts worldwide.^[16] Sharp's key theme is that power is not monolithic; that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power. For Sharp, political power, the power of any state—regardless of its particular structural organization—ultimately derives from the subjects of the state. His fundamental belief is that any power structure relies upon the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). If subjects do not obey, leaders have no power. Sharp has been called both the "Machiavelli of nonviolence" and the "Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare."^[17] Sharp's scholarship has influenced resistance organizations around the world. Most recently the protest movement that toppled President Mubarak of Egypt drew extensively on his ideas, as well as the youth movement in Tunisia and the earlier ones in the Eastern European color revolutions that had previously been inspired by Sharp's work.^[18]

A recent articulation of conflict theory is found in Alan Sears' (Canadian sociologist) book A Good Book, in Theory: A Guide to Theoretical Thinking (2008):^[19]

• Societies are defined by inequality that produces conflict, rather than which produces order and consensus. This conflict based on inequality can only be overcome through a fundamental transformation of the existing relations in the society, and is productive of new social relations.
• The disadvantaged have structural interests that run counter to the status quo, which, once they are assumed, will lead to social change. Thus, they are viewed as agents of change rather than objects one should feel sympathy for.
• Human potential (e.g., capacity for creativity) is suppressed by conditions of exploitation and oppression, which are necessary in any society with an unequal division of labour. These and other qualities do not necessarily have to be stunted due to the requirements of the so-called "civilizing process," or "functional necessity": creativity is actually an engine for economic development and change.
• The role of theory is in realizing human potential and transforming society, rather than maintaining the power structure. The opposite aim of theory would be the objectivity and detachment associated with positivism, where theory is a neutral, explanatory tool.
• Consensus is a euphemism for ideology. Genuine consensus is not achieved, rather the more powerful in societies are able to impose their conceptions on others and have them accept their discourses. Consensus does not preserve social order, it entrenches stratification, e.g., the American dream.
• The State serves the particular interests of the most powerful while claiming to represent the interests of all. Representation of disadvantaged groups in State processes may cultivate the notion of full participation, but this is an illusion/ideology.

• Inequality on a global level is characterized by the purposeful underdevelopment of Third World countries, both during colonization and after national independence. The global system (i.e., development agencies such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund) benefits the most powerful countries and multi-national corporations, rather than the subjects of development, through economic, political, and military actions.

Although Sears associates the conflict theory approach with Marxism, he argues that it is the foundation for much "feminist, post-modernist, anti-racist, and lesbian-gay liberationist theories."^[20]

Types of conflict theory[link]

Conflict theory is most commonly associated with Marxism, but as a reaction to functionalism and the positivist method may also be associated with number of other perspectives, including:

• Critical theory
• Feminist theory: The advocacy of social equality for women and men, in opposition to patriarchy and sexism.^[21]
• Postmodern theory: An approach that is critical of modernism, with a mistrust of grand theories and ideologies.^[21]
• Post-structural theory
• Postcolonial theory
• Queer theory: A growing body of research findings that challenges the heterosexual bias in Western society.^[21]
• World systems theory
• Race-Conflict Approach: A point of view that focuses on inequality and conflict between people of different racial and ethnic categories.^[21]

See also[link]

• Game theory
• Social defeat
• Social-conflict theory
• Sociology of peace, war, and social conflict
• Structural functionalism
• Conflict Management

References[link]

Jane Addams
Born	(1860-09-06)September 6, 1860 Cedarville, Illinois, U.S.
Died	May 21, 1935(1935-05-21) (aged 74) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Social and political activist, author and lecturer, community organizer, public intellectual
Parents	John H. Addams Sarah WeberHlll
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent^[1] reformer of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed the vote to be effective in doing so. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy.^[2] In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Biography[link]

Early Life

Born in Cedarville, Illinois^[3], Jane Addams was the youngest of eight children born into a prosperous northern Illinois family; her father was politically prominent. Three of her siblings died in infancy, and another died at sixteen, leaving only four by the time Addams was age eight. ^[4] Her mother, Sarah Addams^[3] (née Weber), died in childbirth when Jane was two years old.^[5]

Addams spent her childhood playing outdoors, reading indoors, and attending Sunday school. When she was four, she contracted tuberculosis of the spine, Potts's disease, which caused a curvature in her back and lifelong health problems. As a child, she thought she was "ugly" and later remembered wanting not to embarrass her father, when he was dressed in his Sunday best, by walking down the street with him.^[6]

Addams adored her father when she was a child, as she made clear in the stories she told in her memoir, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). John Huey Addams was an agricultural businessman with large timber, cattle, and agricultural holdings; flour and timber mills; and a woolen factory. He was the president of The Second National Bank of Freeport. He remarried in 1868, when Jane was eight years old. His second wife was Anna Hostetter Haldeman, the widow of a miller in Freeport.^[7]

John Addams was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party, served as an Illinois State Senator (1855–70), and supported his friend Abraham Lincoln in his candidacies, for senator (1854) and the presidency (1860). John Addams kept a letter from Lincoln in his desk, and Jane Addams loved to look at it as a child.^[8]

In her teens, Addams had big dreams—to do something useful in the world. Long interested in the poor from her reading of Dickens and inspired by her mother's kindness to the Cedarville poor, she decided to become a doctor so that she could live and work among the poor. It was a vague idea, nurtured by the delights of fiction. She was a voracious reader.

Education

Addams's father encouraged her to pursue higher education, but not too far from home. She was eager to attend the brand-new college for women, Smith College in Massachusetts; but her father required Addams to attend nearby Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College), in Rockford, Illinois^[3]. After graduating from Rockford in 1881^[3], with a collegiate certificate, she still hoped to attend Smith to earn a proper B.A. That summer, her father died unexpectedly from an appendicitis. Each child inherited roughly $50,000 (equivalent to $1.2 million today).

That fall, Addams, her sister Alice, Alice's husband Harry, and their stepmother, Anna Haldeman Addams, moved to Philadelphia so that the three young people could pursue medical educations. Harry was already trained in medicine and did further studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Jane and Alice completed their first year of medical school at the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia^[3], but Jane's health problems, a spinal operation^[3] and a nervous breakdown, prevented her from completing the degree. She was filled with sadness at her failure. Stepmother Anna was also ill, so the entire family canceled their plans to stay two years and returned to Cedarville.^[9]

The following fall her brother-in-law/stepbrother Harry performed surgery on her back, to straighten it. He then advised that she not pursue studies but, instead, travel. In August 1883, she set off for a two-year tour of Europe with her stepmother, traveling some of the time with friends and family who joined them. Addams decided that she did not have to become a doctor to be able to help the poor. But, what then should she do?^[10]

Upon her return home, in June 1885, she lived with her stepmother in Cedarville, and spent the winters with her in Baltimore. Addams, still filled with vague ambition, sank into depression, unsure of her future and feeling useless leading the conventional life expected of a well-to-do young woman. She wrote long letters to her friend from Rockford Seminary, Ellen Gates Starr, mostly about Christianity and books but sometimes about her despair.^[11]

Deciding to begin a settlement house

Meanwhile, she was gathering clues about her future from what she read. Fascinated by the early Christians and Tolstoy's book My Religion, she was baptized a Christian in the Cedarville Presbyterian Church, in the summer of 1886.^[12] Reading Giuseppe Mazzini's Duties of Man, she began to be inspired by the idea of democracy as a social ideal. She still felt confused about her role as a woman, though. John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women made her question the social pressures on a woman to marry and devote her life to family.^[13]

Then, finally, she read about something she could actually do. In the summer of 1887, she read in a magazine about the new idea of a settlement house. She decided to visit the world's first, in London, on a second trip to Europe. It was called Toynbee Hall. She and several friends, including Ellen Gates Starr, traveled in Europe from December 1887 through the summer of 1888. Addams told no one of her dream to start a settlement house at first; but, as she traveled, she felt increasingly guilty that she was just being a tourist and not acting.^[14]

Her feelings finally overwhelmed her after watching a bullfight in Madrid. While her friends soon left the arena, too horrified by the great bloody gore of the event to remain, Addams stayed, mesmerized by what she saw as an exotic cultural tradition. Afterward, she condemned her fascination with the bullfight and her inability to feel outraged at the suffering of the horses and bulls that had been killed. She blamed her love of culture for hardening her heart to suffering, for inhibiting her from acting. And was not that the underlying reason she still had not started a settlement house? Believing that if she told someone her dream, she might finally do something, she told Ellen Gates Starr. Starr loved the idea of starting a settlement house and agreed to join Addams in pursuing her dream.^[15]

Addams and another friend traveled to London without Starr, who was tied up.^[16] Visiting Toynbee Hall, Addams was enchanted. She described it as "a community of University men who live there, have their recreation clubs and society all among the poor people, yet, in the same style in which they would live in their own circle. It is so free of 'professional doing good,' so unaffectedly sincere and so productive of good results in its classes and libraries that it seems perfectly ideal." Addams's dream of the classes mingling socially to mutual benefit, as they had in early Christian circles, seemed embodied in the new type of institution.^[17]

Religion and religious motives[link]

In fact, the co-founders of Toynbee Hall, Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, shared Addams's desire to bring Christianity back to its roots. Part of what was called the "social Christian" movement, the Barnetts had no interest in converting anyone to Christianity, but they did feel that Christians should be more engaged with the world, and, in the words of one of the leaders of the movement in England, W.H. Fremantle, "imbue all human relations with the spirit of Christ's self-renouncing love." Addams learned about social Christianity from them, soon considered herself one, and soon made friends among the leaders of the "social Christian" movement in the United States.^[18]

Jane Addams's religious faith was thus a central motive in co-founding Hull House with Starr, but the settlement was never religious. It did not seek to convert others to Christianity. A brief experiment in weekly prayer among the residents of the settlement house, requested by some of them, was so ecumenical in its approach that it soon fizzled. (However, other settlements in both Great Britain and the United States would be religious and seek conversions).^[19]

Addams's own religious beliefs were shaped by her wide reading and life experience.^[20] By the time she had graduated from Rockford Seminary, she knew the Bible and especially the New Testament, thoroughly, having studied it throughout her young life, including in college courses. She had also been required to memorize a verse from the Bible every day at Rockford, and listen to a short sermon on the daily verse by the school's principal. Evidence of this deep familiarity with Scripture can be found throughout her later writings.

While she remained a member of a Presbyterian Church, Addams regularly attended a Unitarian Church and Ethical Society in Chicago. And at one point was appointed "interim lecturer" at the Ethical Society. Addams also established a close relationship with members of the established Jewish community, notably with the rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation, Emil G. Hirsch, and several so Sinai's congregants, among them Judge Julian Mack and Julius Rosenwald. ^[21]

Hull House[link]

Jane Addams, 1915.

In 1889 she and her college friend co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, the first settlement house in the United States.

Organization[link]

The run-down mansion had been built by Charles Hull in 1856 and needed repairs and upgrading. Addams at first paid for all of the capital expenses (repairing the roof of the porch, repainting the rooms, purchasing the furniture) and the bulk of the operating costs. But gifts from individuals supported the House from its first year and over time, Addams was able to reduce the proportion of her contributions, although the annual budget grew rapidly. A number of wealthy women became important long-term donors to the House, including Helen Culver, who managed her first cousin Charles Hull's estate, and who eventually allowed them to use the house rent free, Louise deKoven Bowen, Mary Rozet Smith, Mary Wilmarth, and others.^[22][23]

Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house, which would later become the residence of about twenty-five women. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gym, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, and a library, as well as labor-related divisions. Her adult night school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. In addition to making available social services and cultural events for the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training. Eventually, Hull House became a thirteen-building settlement complex, which included a playground and a summer camp (known as Bowen Country Club).

The neighborhood[link]

The Hull House neighborhood was a mix of various European ethnic groups that had immigrated to Chicago around the start of the twentieth century. The Bethlehem-Howard Neighborhood Center Records that mix of immigrants which comprised the social laboratory upon which the social and philanthropic elitists comprising Hull House's inner sanctum tested their theories and based their challenges to the establishment. "Germans and Jews resided south of that inner core (south of Twelfth Street) [...] The Greek delta formed by Harrison, Halsted, and Blue Island Streets served as a buffer to the Irish residing to the north and the Canadian–French to the northwest."^[24] Italians resided within the inner core of the Hull House Neighborhood [...] from the river on the east end, on out to the western ends of what came to be known as Little Italy.^[25] Greeks and Jews, along with the remnants of other immigrant groups, began their exodus from the neighborhood during the early part of the twentieth century. The Italians were the only ethnic group to continue as an intact and thriving community through the Great Depression, World War II, and well beyond the ultimate demise of Hull House proper in 1963.^[26]

Hull House, as Addams named it, became America's best known settlement house. She used Hull House to generate system-directed change, on the principle that to keep families safe, community and societal conditions had to be improved.^[27] The neighborhood was controlled by local political bosses. At one point Addams ran for alderman against the local boss, Johnnie Powers, and lost.

Ethics[link]

Starr and Addams developed three "ethical principles" for social settlements: "to teach by example, to practice cooperation, and to practice social democracy, that is, egalitarian, or democratic, social relations across class lines."^[28] Hull House therefore offered a comprehensive program of civic, cultural, recreational, and educational activities and attracted admiring visitors from all over the world, in including William Lyon MacKenzie King, a graduate student from Harvard who later became prime minister of Canada. In the 1890s Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and other residents of the house made it a world center of social reform activity. Hull House used the latest methodology (pioneering in statistical mapping) to study overcrowding, truancy, typhoid fever, cocaine, children's reading, newsboys, infant mortality, and midwifery. Starting with efforts to improve the immediate neighborhood, the Hull House group became involved in city- and state-wide campaigns for better housing, improvements in public welfare, stricter child-labor laws, and protection of working women. Addams brought in prominent visitors from around the world, and had close links with leading Chicago intellectuals and philanthropists. In 1912 she helped start the new Progressive Party and supported the presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt.

"Addams’ philosophy combined feminist sensibilities with an unwavering commitment to social improvement through cooperative efforts. Although she sympathized with feminists, socialists, and pacifists, Addams refused to be labeled. This refusal was pragmatic rather than ideological." ^[29]

Emphasis on children[link]

Addams at Hull House stressed the role of children in the Americanization process of new immigrants, and fostered the play movement and the research and service fields of leisure, youth, and human services. Addams argued in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) that play and recreation programs are needed because cities are destroying the spirit of youth. Addams feared that cities and playgrounds were killing the spirit of youth; recreation and play were healthy mediums to channel the spirit of youth. Hull-House featured multiple programs in art and drama, kindergarten classes, boys' and girls' clubs, language classes, reading groups, college extension courses, along with public baths, a free-speech atmosphere, a gymnasium, a labor museum and playground. They were all designed to foster democratic cooperation and collective action and downplay individualism. She helped pass the first model tenement code and the first factory laws.

Documenting social illnesses[link]

Addams and her colleagues documented the geography of typhoid fever and reported that poor workers bore the brunt of illness. She identified the political corruption and business avarice that caused the city bureaucracy to ignore health, sanitation, and building codes. Linking environmental justice and municipal reform, she eventually defeated the bosses and fostered a more equitable distribution of city services and modernized inspection practices.^[30] Addams spoke of the "undoubted powers of public recreation to bring together the classes of a community in the modern city unhappily so full of devices for keeping them apart."^[31] Addams worked with the Chicago Board of Health and served as the first vice-president of the Playground Association of America.

Teaching[link]

Addams lectured throughout the United States, at various colleges and social settlements. For example:

In February 13, 1899, she went on a typical lecture tour—leaving Chicago on February 13, she spoke at Wells College in Aurora, New York on the 14th; at Auburn Seminary the next day; at Wells again on the 16th; then to New York for a quick stopover; then to Boston where she made two appearances at woman's clubs on the 18th; two more appearances on Sunday; on to the University of Vermont on Monday; back to Boston for two more appearance [sic] on Tuesday; two more on Wednesday, and two on Thursday; then she was off to Meadville, Pennsylvania; to Harrisburg, Richmond, Virginia, and Columbia, South Carolina, before returning home.^[32]

Although many of these speeches were not academic, others were, and Addams' division between academic and everyday thought was dramatically different from that of her typical male academic colleagues. In addition, she offered college courses through the Extension Division of the University of Chicago.^[33] She declined offers from the university to become directly affiliated with it, including an offer from Albion Small, chair of the Department of Sociology, of a graduate faculty position. She declined in order to maintain her independent role outside of academia. Her goal was to teach adults not enrolled in formal academic institutions, because of their poverty and/or lack of credentials. Furthermore, she wanted no university controls over her political activism.^[34]

Addams was a charter member of the American Sociological Society, founded in 1905. She gave papers to it in 1912, 1915, and 1919. She was the most prominent woman member during this period.

Friendships[link]

Throughout her life Addams was close to many women and was very good at eliciting the involvement of women from different classes in Hull House's programs. Her closest adult companion and friend was Mary Rozet Smith, who supported Addams's work at Hull House, and with whom she shared a romantic friendship. Together they owned a summer house in Bar Harbor, Maine.^{[35][36][37][38][39]}

Peace movement[link]

Delegation to the Women's Suffrage Legislature Sydney Addams (left) and Miss Elizabeth Burke of the University of Chicago, 1911

The harsh criticism received by Addams, both for her outspoken pacifism during World War I and her defense of immigrants' civil rights during a period when anarchism and socialism were greatly feared in the United States, never stopped her from putting forth a great amount of effort and energy into Hull House. She even had the time to work on international peace efforts. She spoke and campaigned extensively for Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Presidential campaign on the 'Progressive' Party.

In 1915, she became involved in the Woman's Peace Party and was elected national chairman.^[3][40] Addams was elected president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915,^[3][41] a position that entailed frequent travel to Europe (during and after World War I) and Asia. With this she also attended the International Woman's Conference in The Hague^[3] and was chosen to head the commission to find an end to the war. This included meeting ten leaders in neutral countries as well as those at war to discuss mediation. This was the first significant international effort against the war. Addams along with co-delegates Emily Balch and Alice Hamilton documented their experiences of this period and was published as a book Women at The Hague (University of Illinois).^[42]

In her journal, Balch recorded her impression of Jane Addams (April 1915):

"Miss Addams shines, so respectful of everyone's views, so eager to understand and sympathize, so patient of anarchy and even ego, yet always there, strong, wise and in the lead. No 'managing', no keeping dark and bringing things subtly to pass, just a radiating wisdom and power of judgement."^[40]

In 1917, she became also member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA (American branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation founded in 1919) and was a member of the Fellowship Council until 1933.^[43] When the US joined the war, in 1917, Addams started to be strongly criticized. She faced increasingly harsh rebukes and criticism as a pacifist. Her 1915 speech on pacifism at Carnegie Hall received negative coverage by newspapers such as the New York Times, which branded her as unpatriotic.^[44][45] Later, during her travels, she would spend time meeting with a wide variety of diplomats and civic leaders and reiterating her Victorian belief in women's special mission to preserve peace. Recognition of these efforts came with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Addams in 1931.^[46] As the first U.S. woman to win the prize, Addams was applauded for her "expression of an essentially American democracy."^[47] She donated her share of the prize money to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.^[3]

Legacy[link]

Hull House and the Peace Movement are widely recognized as the key tangible pillars of Addams' legacy. While her life focused on the development of individuals, her ideas continue to influence social, political and economic reform in the United States as well as internationally.

Willard Motley, a resident artist of Hull House, extracting from Addams' central theory on symbolic interactionism, used the neighborhood and its people to write his 1948 best seller, Knock on Any Door.^[48]

Addams is honored in the 'Famous Americans Series', postal Issues of 1940

Addams' role as reformer enabled her to petition the establishment at and alter the social and physical geography of her Chicago neighborhood. Although contemporary academic sociologists defined her engagement as "social work," Addams' efforts differed significantly from activities typically labeled as "social work" during that time period. Before Addams' powerful influence on the profession, social work was largely informed by a "friendly visitor" model in which typically wealthy women of high public stature visited impoverished individuals and, through systematic assessment and intervention, aimed to improve the lives of the poor. Addams rejected the friendly visitor model in favor of a model of social reform/social theory-building, thereby introducing the now-central tenets of social justice and reform to the field of social work.^[49]

Hull House enabled Addams to befriend and become a colleague to early members of the Chicago School of Sociology. Her influence, through her work in applied sociology, impacted their thoughts and their direction. In 1893, she co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including promoting women's rights, ending child labor, and mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike.

Addams worked with labor as well as other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile-court law, tenement-house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers' compensation. She advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and supported women's suffrage. She was a strong advocate of justice for immigrants and blacks, becoming a chartered member of the NAACP. Among the projects that the members of the Hull House opened were the Immigrants' Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic.

Addams' writings and speeches, on behalf of the formation of the League of Nations and as peace advocate, are well documented; influencing the later shape of the United Nations.

Memorials[link]

In 2007, the state of Illinois renamed the Northwest Tollway as the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway.^[50]

Jane Addams House is a residence hall built in 1947, at Connecticut College.

Hull House had to be demolished for the establishment of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, in 1963, and relocated. The Hull residence itself was preserved as a museum and monument to Jane Addams.^[51]

Jane Addams Business Careers Center is a high school in Cleveland, Ohio.^[52]

Jane Addams High School For Academic Careers is a high school in The Bronx, NY.^[53]

See also[link]

• Florence Kelley
• Flora Dunlap
• Mary Treglia
• Elizabeth Harrison (educator)
• Jane Addams Burial Site
• Jane Addams School for Democracy
• Jane Addams Middle School
• John H. Addams Homestead
• John Dewey
• Community practice social work
• Stanton Street Settlement
• Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• List of female Nobel laureates
• International Fellowship of Reconciliation

References[link]

Research Resources[link]

• Jane Addams Collection, 1838-date (bulk 1880-1935) (130 linear feet) is housed at Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
• Jane Addams Correspondence, 1872-1935 (inclusive) (23 reels) is housed at Harvard University Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study.

Further reading[link]

Biographies[link]

• Berson, Robin Kadison. Jane Addams: a biography (2004), 140pp.
• Brown, Victoria Bissell. The Education of Jane Addams: Politics and Culture in Modern America. (2003). 421 pp. excerpt and text search
• Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (1973), 339pp, solid scholarship but tends toward debunking
• Diliberto, Gioia. A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams. (1999). 318 pp.
• Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life Basic Books: 2002 online edition, by a leading conservative scholar
• Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. (2005). 582 pp.; biography to 1899
• Knight, Louise W. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. (2010). 334 pp., complete biography aimed at a broader audience.
• Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A Writer's Life. (2004). 306 pp.
• Linn, James W. Jane Addams: A biography. (1935) 457 pp, by her admiring nephew

Specialty studies[link]

• "How Did Changes in the Built Environment at Hull-House Reflect the Settlement's Interaction with Its Neighbors, 1889-1912?" by Kathryn Kish Sklar, Rima Lunin Schultz, Melissa Doak, Marian Horan, and Kerry Lippincott. Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
• Alonso, Harriet Hyman. "Nobel Peace Laureates, Jane Addams And Emily Greene Balch: Two Women Of The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom." Journal Of Women's History 1995 7(2): 6-26. Issn: 1042-7961 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Beer, Janet and Joslin, Katherine. "Diseases of the Body Politic: White Slavery in Jane Addams' "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" and "Selected Short Stories" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman." Journal of American Studies 1999 33(1): 1-18. Issn: 0021-8758
• Bowen, Louise de Koven. Growing up with Pity. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926.
• Brinkmann, Tobias, "Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), link: <http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo12986248.html>
• Brittain, Vera, "The Rebel Passion", George Allen & Unwin ltd, London, 1964.
• Bryan, Mary Linn McCree, and Allen F. Davis. One Hundred Years at Hull-House (1990), a history of the programs there
• Carson, Minal. Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930 (1990)
• Chansky, Dorothy. "Re-visioning Reform," American Quarterly vol 55 #3 (2003) 515-523 online at Project Muse
• Curti, Merle. "Jane Addams on Human Nature," Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 240–253 in JSTOR
• Danielson, Caroline Page. "Citizen Acts: Citizenship and Political Agency in the Works of Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Emma Goldman." PhD dissertation U. of Michigan 1996. 331 pp. DAI 1996 57(6): 2651-A. DA9635502 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Dawley, Alan. Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (2003)
• Deegan, Mary. Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Inc., 1988.
• Donovan, Brian. White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887-1917. U of Illinois Press. 2006. 186 pp.
• Duffy, William. "Remembering is the Remedy: Jane Addams's Response to Conflicted Discourse." Rhetoric Review 30.2 (2011): 135-152.
• Fischer, Marilyn, et al eds. Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (2009), 230pp; 11 specialized essays by scholars excerpt and text search
• Foust, Mathew A. "Perplexities of Filiality: Confucius and Jane Addams on the Private/Public Distinction," "Asian Philosophy" (2008) 18(2): 149-166.
• Grimm, Robert Thornton, Jr. "Forerunners for a Domestic Revolution: Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the Ideology Of Childhood, 1900-1916." Illinois Historical Journal 1997 90(1): 47-64. Issn: 0748-8149
• Hamington, Maurice. "Jane Addams," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007) online edition, Addams as philosopher
• Hamington, Maurice. Embodied Care Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics (2004) excerpt and online search at amazon.com
• Hamington, Maurice. "Jane Addams and a Politics of Embodied Care," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy v 15 #2 2001, pp. 105–121 online at Project Muse
• Hamington, Maurice. "Public Pragmatism: Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on Lynching," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 19#2 (2005), pp. 167–174 online at Project Muse
• Hansen, Jonathan M. "Fighting Words: The Transnational Patriotism of Eugene V. Debs, Jane Addams, and W. E. B. Du Bois." PhD dissertation Boston U. 1997. 286 pp. DAI 1997 57(10): 4511-A. DA9710148 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Henderson, Karla A. "Jane Addams: Leisure Services Pioneer". Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, v53 n2 p42-45 Feb 1982.
• Jackson, Shannon. Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (2000). 384 pp.
• Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A writer's Life (2009) excerpt and text search
• Krysiak, Barbara H. "Full-Service Community Schools: Jane Addams Meets John Dewey.". School Business Affairs, v67 n8 p4-8 Aug 2001. ISSN 0036-651X
• Knight, Louise W. "An Authoritative Voice: Jane Addams and the Oratorical Tradition." Gender & History 1998 10(2): 217-251. Issn: 0953-5233 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Knight, Louise W. "Biography's Window on Social Change: Benevolence and Justice in Jane Addams's 'A Modern Lear.'" Journal Of Women's History 1997 9(1): 111-138. Issn: 1042-7961 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Lissak, R. S. Pluralism and Progressives: Hull-House and the New Immigrants. (1989)
• Matassarin, Kat. "Jane Addams of Hull-House: Creative Drama at the Turn of the Century". Children's Theatre Review, Oct 1983. v32 n4 pp 13–15
• Morton, Keith. "Addams, Day, and Dewey: The Emergence of Community Service in American Culture". Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Fall 1997 v4 pp 137–49 * Oakes, Jeannie. Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform. (2000). ISBN 0-7879-4023-2
• Ostman, Heather Elaine. "Social Activist Visions: Constructions of Womanhood in the Autobiographies of Jane Addams and Emma Goldman." PhD dissertation Fordham U. 2004. 240 pp. DAI 2004 65(3): 934-A. DA3125022 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Packard, Sandra. "Jane Addams: Contributions and Solutions for Art Education". Art Education, 29, 1, 9-12, Jan 76.
• Phillips, J. O. C. "The Education of Jane Addams". History of Education Quarterly, 14, 1, 49-68, Spr 74.
• Philpott, Thomas. L. The Slum and the Ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and Reformers in Chicago, 1880-1930. (1991).
• Platt, Harold. "Jane Addams and the Ward Boss Revisited: Class, Politics, and Public Health in Chicago, 1890-1930." Environmental History 2000 5(2): 194-222. ISSN 1084-5453
• Polacheck, Hilda Satt. I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
• Sargent, David Kevin. "Jane Addams's Rhetorical Ethic." PhD dissertation Northwestern U. 1996. 275 pp. DAI 1997 57(11): 4597-A. DA9714673 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Scherman, Rosemarie Redlich. "Jane Addams and the Chicago Social Justice Movement, 1889-1912." PhD dissertation City U. of New York 1999. 337 pp. DAI 1999 60(4): 1297-A. DA9924849 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Schott, Linda. "Jane Addams and William James on Alternatives to War." Journal Of The History Of Ideas 1993 54(2): 241-254. in JSTOR
• Seigfried, Charlene H. "A Pragmatist Response to Death: Jane Addams on the Permanent and the Transient" "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" (2007) 21(2): 133-141.
• Shields, Patricia M. 2006. "Democracy and the Social Feminist Ethics of Jane Addams: A Vision for Public Administration". Administrative Theory & Praxis, vol. 28, no. 3, September, pp. 418–443. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/polsfacp/36
• Sklar, Kathryn Kish. "Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers," Signs, Vol. 10, No. 4, (Summer, 1985), pp. 658–677 in JSTOR
• Sklar, Kathryn Kish. "'Some of us who deal with the Social Fabric': Jane Addams Blends Peace and Social Justice, 1907-1919." Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era 2003 2(1): 80-96. ISSN 1537-7814 Fulltext: at History Cooperative
• Stebner, E. J. The Women of Hull-House: A Study in Spirituality, Vocation, and Friendship. (1997).
• Stiehm, Judith Hicks. "Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.” Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
• Sullivan, M. "Social work's legacy of peace: echoes from the early 20th century." Social Work, Sep93; 38(5): 513-20. EBSCO
• Toft, Jessica and Abrams, Laura S. "Progressive Maternalists and the Citizenship Status of Low-Income Single Mothers." Social Service Review 2004 78(3): 447-465. ISSN: 0037-7961 Fulltext: Ebsco

Primary sources[link]

• Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, Barbara Bair, and Maree De Angury. eds., The Selected Papers of Jane Addams Volume 1: Preparing to Lead, 1860-1881. University of Illinois Press, 2002. online excerpt and text search
• Addams, Jane. "A Belated Industry" The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 1, No. 5 (Mar., 1896), pp. 536–550 in JSTOR
• Addams, Jane. The subjective value of a social settlement (1892) online
• Addams, Jane, ed. Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions (1896; reprint 2007) excerpts and online search from amazon.com full text
• Kelley, Florence. "Hull House" The New England magazine. Volume 24, Issue 5. (July 1898) pp. 550–566 online at MOA
• Addams, Jane. "Ethical Survivals in Municipal Corruption," International Journal of Ethics Vol. 8, No. 3 (Apr., 1898), pp. 273–291 in JSTOR
• Addams, Jane. "Trades Unions and Public Duty," The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jan., 1899), pp. 448–462 in JSTOR
• Addams, Jane. "The Subtle Problems of Charity," The Atlantic monthly. Volume 83, Issue 496 (February 1899) pp. 163–179 online at MOA
• Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) online at books.google.com online at Harvard Library
  • 23 editions published between 1902 and 2006 in English and held by 1,570 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane. Child labor 1905 Harvard Library online
• Addams, Jane. "Problems of Municipal Administration," The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 10, No. 4 (Jan., 1905), pp. 425–444 JSTOR
• Addams, Jane. "Child Labor Legislation - A Requisite for Industrial Efficiency," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 25, Child Labor (May, 1905), pp. 128–136 in JSTOR
• Addams, Jane. The operation of the Illinois child labor law, (1906) online at Harvard Library
• Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace (1906) online at books.google.com
  • 13 editions published between 1906 and 2007 in English and held by 686 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane. National protection for children 1907 online at Harvard Library
• Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) online at books.google.com, online at Harvard Library
  • 16 editions published between 1909 and 1972 in English and held by 1,094 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes, 1910 online at A Celebration of Women Writers online at Harvard Library
  • 72 editions published between 1910 and 2007 in English and held by 3,250 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane. A new conscience and an ancient evil (1912) online at Harvard Library
  • 14 editions published between 1912 and 2003 in English and held by 912 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane; Balch, Emily Greene; and Hamilton, Alice. Women at the Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results. (1915) reprint ed by Harriet Hyman Alonso, (2003). 91 pp. online at Harvard Library
• Addams, Jane. The Long Road of Woman's Memory (1916) online at books.google.com online at Harvard Library, also reprint U. of Illinois Press, 2002. 84 pp.
• Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War 1922 online edition, online at Harvard Library
  • 12 editions published between 1922 and 2002 in English and held by 835 libraries worldwide
• Addams, Jane. My Friend, Julia Lathrop. (1935; reprint U. of Illinois Press, 2004) 166 pp.
• Addams, Jane. Jane Addams: A Centennial Reader (1960) online edition
• Elshtain, Jean B. ed. The Jane Addams Reader (2002), 488pp
• Lasch, Christopher, ed. The Social Thought of Jane Addams. (1965).

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Jane Addams

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jane Addams

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jane Addams

• Works by Jane Addams at Project Gutenberg
• Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870–1930. Jane Addams (1860–1935). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Jane Addams.
• Works by Jane Addams in audio format from LibriVox
• FBI file on Jane Addams
• Works by Jane Addams listed at the Online Books Page
• Twenty Years at Hull House Online edition at A Celebration of Women Writers
• Twenty Years at Hull House University of Virginia American Studies Hypertext project.
• Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
• The Bitter Cry of Outcast London by Rev. Andrew Mearns
• Online photograph exhibit of Jane Addams from Swarthmore College's Peace Collection
• Gay Great article in Fyne Times magazine
• Taylor Street Archives; Hull House: Bowen Country Club
• Jane Addams entry by Maurice Hamington in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Looks at her as "the first woman 'public philosopher' in United States history".
• Women at the Hague: the International Congress of Women and its Results By Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, Alice Hamilton. 171 pages, published 1915 by MacMillan.
• International Fellowship of Reconciliation

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Karl Marx

Marx in 1875
Born	Karl Heinrich Marx 5 May 1818 Trier, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	14 March 1883(1883-03-14) (aged 64) London, United Kingdom
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy, German philosophy
School	Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Materialism
Main interests	Politics, economics, philosophy, sociology, labour, history, class struggle,
Notable ideas	Co-founder of Marxism (with Engels), surplus value, contributions to the labor theory of value, alienation and exploitation of the worker, The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, materialist conception of history
Influenced by Hegel, Feuerbach, Spinoza, Proudhon, Stirner, Smith, Voltaire, Ricardo, Vico, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Goethe, Helvetius, d'Holbach,[1] Liebig,[2] Darwin, Fourier, Robert Owen, Balcescu, Hess, Hupay, Guizot, Pecqueur,[3] Aristotle, Epicurus
Influenced Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Tito, Hoxha, Castro, Guevara, Ceaușescu, Ho, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Luxemburg, Lukács, Gramsci, Korsch, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Chomsky, Bookchin, Arendt, Marcuse, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze, Debord, Situationist International, Frankfurt School, Negri, Taussig, Roy, Laclau, Bourdieu, Schumpeter, Aflaq and many others
Signature

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894); some of his works were co-written with his friend and fellow German revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.^[4]

Born into a wealthy middle class family in Trier, formerly in Prussian Rhineland now called Rhineland-Palatinate, Marx studied at both the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. In 1836, he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, marrying her in 1843. After his studies, he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out his theory of dialectical materialism. Moving to Paris in 1843, he began writing for other radical newspapers. He met Engels in Paris, and the two men worked together on a series of books. Exiled to Brussels, he became a leading figure of the Communist League, before moving back to Cologne, where he founded his own newspaper. In 1849 he was exiled again and moved to London together with his wife and children. In London, where the family was reduced to poverty, Marx continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, and also campaigned for socialism—he became a significant figure in the International Workingmen's Association.

Marx's theories about society, economics and politics—collectively known as Marxism—hold that all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle: a conflict between an ownership class which controls production and a lower class which produces the labour for such goods. Heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, he called it the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", believing it to be run by the wealthy classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism.^[5] He argued that under socialism society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the "workers state" or "workers' democracy".^[6][7] He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for the former's implementation, arguing that both social theorists and underprivileged people should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.^[8][9]

Revolutionary socialist governments espousing Marxist concepts took power in a variety of countries in the 20th century, leading to the formation of such socialist states as the Soviet Union in 1922 and the People's Republic of China in 1949. Many labor unions and worker's parties worldwide were also influenced by Marxist ideas. Various theoretical variants, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism and Maoism, were developed. Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.^[10] Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.^[11][12]

Biography[link]

Early life: 1818–1835[link]

Marx's birthplace in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, which is now a museum devoted to him.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818 at 664 Brückergasse in Trier, a town located in the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine.^[13] His ancestry was Ashkenazi Jewish, with his paternal line having supplied the rabbis of Trier since 1723, a role that had been taken up by his own grandfather, Meier Halevi Marx; Meier's son and Karl's father would be the first in the line to receive a secular education.^[14] His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi.^[15] Karl's father, Herschel Marx, was middle-class and relatively wealthy: the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards; he converted from Judaism to the Protestant Christian denomination of Lutheranism prior to his son's birth, taking on the German forename of Heinrich over Herschel.^[4] In 1815, he began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family from a five-room rented apartment into a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra.^[16] A man of the Enlightenment, Heinrich Marx was interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire, and took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then governed by an absolute monarchy.^[17] Karl's mother, born Henrietta Pressburg (20 July 1788-30 November 1863), was a Dutch Jew who, unlike her husband, was only semi-literate. She claimed to suffer from "excessive mother love", devoting much time to her family, and insisting on cleanliness within her home.^[18] She was from a prosperous business family. Her family later founded the company Philips Electronics: she was great-aunt to Anton and Gerard Philips, and great-great-aunt to Frits Philips. Her brother, Marx's uncle Benjamin Philips (1830-1900), was a wealthy banker and industrialist, who Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come rely upon for loans, while they were exiled in London.^[19]

Heinrich Marx converted to Lutheran Protestantism in 1816 or 1817 in order to continue practicing law after the Prussian edict denying Jews to the bar. Karl was born in 1818 and baptized in 1824, but his mother, Henriette, did not convert until 1825, when Karl was 7. There is no evidence that the Marx family actually embraced Lutheranism, although there is no evidence they were practicing Jews. Marx identified himself as an atheist.^[20][21][22]

Little is known about Karl Marx's childhood.^[23] He was privately educated until 1830, when he entered Trier High School, whose headmaster Hugo Wyttenbach was a friend of his father. Wyttenbach had employed many liberal humanists as teachers; this angered the government so that the police raided the school in 1832, discovering what they labelled seditious literature espousing political liberalism being distributed amongst the students.^[24] In 1835, Karl, then aged seventeen, began attending the University of Bonn, where he wished to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field of study.^[25] He was able to avoid military service when he turned eighteen because he suffered from a weak chest.^[26] Being fond of alcoholic beverages, at Bonn he joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner) and at one point served as its co-president.^[27] Marx was more interested in drinking and socialising than studying law, and because of his poor grades, his father forced him to transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented University of Berlin,^[28] where his legal studies became less significant than excursions into philosophy and history.^[29]

Hegelianism and early activism: 1836–1843[link]

In 1836, Marx became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, a beautiful baroness of the Prussian ruling class—"the most desirable young woman in Trier" ^[30] —who broke off her engagement with a young aristocratic second lieutenant to be with him.^[31] Their eventual marriage was controversial for breaking two social taboos of the period: it was a marriage between a woman of a noble background and a man of Jewish origin, as well as being between a member of the upper class (aristocracy) and a member of the middle class, respectively. Such issues were lessened by Marx's friendship with Jenny's father, Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, a liberal thinking aristocrat. Marx dedicated his doctoral thesis to him.^[32] The couple married seven years later, on 19 June 1843, at the Pauluskirche in Bad Kreuznach.^[33]

Marx became interested in, but critical of, the work of the German philosopher G.W.F Hegel (1770–1831), whose ideas were widely debated amongst European philosophical circles at the time.^[34] Marx wrote about falling ill "from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested."^[35] He became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians, who gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer.^[29] Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions, but still adopted his dialectical method in order to criticise established society, politics and religion. Marx befriended Bauer, and in July 1841 the two scandalised their class in Bonn by getting drunk, laughing in church, and galloping through the streets on donkeys.^[36] During that period, Marx concentrated on his criticism of Hegel and certain other Young Hegelians.^[4]

A contemporary drawing of Karl Marx as a young man.

Marx also wrote for his own enjoyment, writing both non-fiction and fiction. In 1837, he completed a short novel, Scorpion and Felix; a drama, Oulanem and some poems, none of which were published.^[37] In 1971, Marx's one act play Oulanem was made available in English by author Robert Payne. According to Payne, the title Oulanem is an anagram for "Manuelo" which is a variant of "Emmanuel" meaning "God is with us".^[38] He soon gave up writing fiction for other pursuits, including learning English and Italian.^[39]

He was deeply engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, which he finished in 1841. The essay has been described as "a daring and original piece of work in which he set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy",^[40] and as such was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided to submit it instead to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his PhD based on it.^[29][41]

From considering an academic career, Marx turned to journalism.^[4][42] He moved to the city of Cologne in 1842, where he began writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, where he expressed his increasingly socialist views on politics.^[43] He criticised the governments of Europe and their policies, but also liberals and other members of the socialist movement whose ideas he thought were ineffective or outright anti-socialist.^[44] The paper eventually attracted the attention of the Prussian government censors, who checked every issue for potentially seditious material before it could be printed. Marx said, "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."^[45] After the paper published an article strongly criticising the monarchy in Russia, the Russian Tsar Nicholas I, an ally of the Prussian monarchy, requested that the Rheinische Zeitung be banned. The Prussian government shut down the paper in 1843.^[46] Marx wrote for the Young Hegelian journal, the Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher, in which he criticised the censorship instructions issued by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. His article was censored and the newspaper closed down by the authorities shortly after.^[47]

In 1843, Marx published On the Jewish Question, in which he distinguished between political and human emancipation. He also examined the role of religious practice in society.^[4] That same year he published Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in which he dealt more substantively with religion, describing it as "the opiate of the people".^[4] He completed both works shortly before leaving Cologne.^[48]

Paris: 1843–1845[link]

Following the government-imposed shutdown of the Rheinische Zeitung, Marx got involved with a new radical newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals), which was then being set up by Arnold Ruge, another German socialist revolutionary.^[49] The paper was based not in Germany, but in the city of Paris in neighbouring France, and it was here that both Marx and his wife moved in October 1843. They initially lived with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, but finding these living conditions difficult, the Marxes moved out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844.^[50] Although it was intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher was dominated by the latter, with the only non-German writer being the exiled Russian anarcho-communist Michael Bakunin.^[51] Only one issue was ever published, but it was relatively successful, largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria, which led to those copies sent to Germany being confiscated by the state's police force.^[52]

It was in Paris that, on 28 August 1844, Marx met German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence after becoming interested in the ideas that the latter had expressed in articles written for the Rheinische Zeitung and the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Although they had briefly met each other at the offices of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842, it was here in Paris that they began their friendship that would last for the rest of their lives.^[53] Engels showed Marx his recently published book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844,^[54] which convinced Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history.^[55] Engels and Marx soon set about writing a criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, which would be published in 1845 as The Holy Family.^[56] Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the other Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually also abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well.^[57]

In 1844 Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, a work which covered numerous topics, and went into detail to explain Marx's concept of alienated labour.^[4] A year later Marx would write Theses on Feuerbach, best known for the statement that "the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it".^[4] This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory) and overall, criticising philosophy for putting abstract reality above the physical world.^[4] 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.^[4][58]

After the collapse of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Marx, still living on the Rue Vaneau, began writing for what was then the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper in Europe, Vorwärts!.^[59] Based in Paris, the paper had been established and was run by many activists connected to the revolutionary socialist League of the Just, which would come to be better known as the Communist League within a few years.^[60][61] In Vorwärts!, Marx continued to refine his views on socialism based upon the Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, whilst at the same time criticising various liberals and other socialists operating in Europe at the time.^[62] However in 1845, after receiving a request from the Prussian king, the French government agreed to shut down Vorwärts!, and furthermore, Marx himself was expelled from France by the interior minister François Guizot.^[62]

Brussels: 1845–1847[link]

The first edition of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in German in 1848

Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Brussels in Belgium, but had to pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics in order to enter.^[62] In Brussels, he associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess, Karl Heinzen and Joseph Weydemeyer, and soon Engels moved to the city in order to join them.^[62] In 1845 Marx and Engels visited the leaders of the Chartists, a socialist movement in Britain, using the trip as an opportunity to study in various libraries in London and Manchester.^[63] In collaboration with Engels he also set about writing a book which is often seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism, The German Ideology; the work, like many others, would not see publication in Marx's lifetime, being published only in 1932.^[4][5][64] He followed this with The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), a response to the French anarcho-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty and a critique of French socialist thought in general.^[65]

These books laid 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. First published on 21 February 1848, it laid out the beliefs of the Communist League, a group who had come increasingly under the influence of Marx and Engels, who argued that the League must make their aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding them as they had formerly been doing.^[66] The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism, that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."^[67] It goes on to look at the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising between the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy middle 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 the time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and replace it with socialism.^[68]

Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals, the Revolutions of 1848.^[69] In France, a revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second Republic.^[69] Marx was supportive of such activity, and having recently received a substantial inheritance from his father of either 6000^[70] or 5000 francs,^[71][72] allegedly used a third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action.^[73] Although the veracity of these allegations is disputed,^[70][74] the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused him of it, subsequently arresting him, and he was forced to flee back to France, where, with a new republican government in power, he believed that he would be safe.^[72][75]

Cologne: 1848–1849[link]

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.^[76] Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848 Marx moved back to Cologne (Köln) where he began issuing 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.^[77] On 1 June, Marx started publication of the daily Neue Rheinische Zeitung ("New Rhenish Newspaper"), 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, Marx remained one of its primary writers, accompanied by other fellow members of the Communist League who wrote for the paper, although despite their input it remained, according to Friedrich Engels, "a simple dictatorship by Marx", who dominated the choice of content.^[78][79][80]

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 the Chief Public Prosecutor, an alleged press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting,^{[81][82][82][83][84]} although each time he was acquitted.^[82][84] Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed, and the king, Frederick William IV, introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters, who implemented counter-revolutionary measures to expunge leftist and other revolutionary elements from the country.^[81] As a part of this, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was soon suppressed and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May.^[80][85] Marx returned to Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counter-revolution 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 not able to move back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London.^[86][87]

London: 1849–1883[link]

Karl Marx and his daughter Jenny (before May 1864)

Marx moved to London in May 1849 and would remain in the city for the rest of his life. It was here that he founded the new headquarters of the Communist League, and got heavily involved with the socialist German Workers' Educational Society, who held their meetings in Great Windmill Street, Soho, central London's entertainment district.^[88][89] Marx devoted himself to two activities: revolutionary organising, and an attempt to understand political economy and capitalism. For the first few years he and his family lived in extreme poverty.^[90][91] His main source of income was his colleague, Engels, who derived much of his income from his family's business.^[91] Marx also briefly worked as correspondent for the New York Tribune in 1851.^[92]

From December 1851 to March 1852 Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, a work on the French Revolution of 1848, in which he expanded upon his concepts of historical materialism, class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, advancing the argument that victorious proletariat has to smash the bourgeois state.^[93]

The 1850s and 1860s also mark the line between what some scholars see as idealistic, Hegelian young Marx from the more scientifically-minded mature Marx writings of the later period.^{[94][95][96][97]} This distinction is usually associated with the structural Marxism school;^[97] not all scholars agree that it indeed exists.^[96][98]

In 1864 Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as First International).^[82] He became a leader of its General Council, to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864.^[99] In that organisation Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred around Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876).^[91] Although Marx won this contest, 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.^[100] 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. On the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, The Civil War in France, a defense of the Commune.^[101]

Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand capitalism, and spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the British Museum studying and reflecting on the works of political economists and on economic data.^[102] By 1857 he had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property, wage labour, the state, foreign trade and the world market; this work did not appear in print until 1941, under the title Grundrisse.^[91][103] In 1859, Marx published Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, his first serious economic work. In the early 1860s he worked on composing three large volumes, the Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo.^[91] This work is often seen as the fourth book of Capital, and constitutes one of the first comprehensive treatises on the history of economic thought.^[104] In 1867 the first volume of Capital was published, a work which analyzed the capitalist process of production.^[105] Here, Marx elaborated his labour theory of value (influenced by Thomas Hodgskin^{[citation needed]}); and his conception of surplus value and exploitation which he argued would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit and the collapse of industrial capitalism.^[106] Volumes II and III remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life and were published posthumously by Engels.^[91]

Marx in 1882

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.^[91] He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His Critique of the Gotha Programme opposed the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to compromise with the state socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle in the interests of a united socialist party.^[91] This work is also notable for another famous Marx's quote: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."^[107]

In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx even contemplated 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.^[91][108] 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 the deleterious influences which are assailing it (the rural commune) from all sides."^[109] Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed, that "normal conditions of spontaneous development" of the rural commune could exist.^[109] However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx points out that "at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production."^[109] 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, 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'.^[110] Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under the title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Death[link]

The tomb of Karl Marx, Highgate Cemetery, London

Following the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883. He died a stateless person;^[111] family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate Cemetery, London, on 17 March 1883. There were between nine and eleven mourners at his funeral.^[112][113]

Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels's speech included the passage:

Marx's daughter Eleanor and Charles Longuet and Paul Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, were also in attendance.^[113] Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short statement in French.^[113] Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also read out.^[113] Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the funeral.^[113] Non-relatives attending the funeral included three communist associates of Marx: Friedrich Lessner, imprisoned for three years after the Cologne communist trial of 1852; G. Lochner, whom Engels described as "an old member of the Communist League" and Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal Society, and a communist activist involved in the 1848 Baden revolution.^[113] Another attendee of the funeral was Ray Lankester, a British zoologist who would later become a prominent academic.^[113]

Upon his own death, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a "significant portion" of his $4.8 million estate.^[30]

Marx's tombstone bears the carved message: "WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE", the final line of The Communist Manifesto, and from the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach (edited by Engels): "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it".^[9] The Communist Party of Great Britain had the monumental tombstone built in 1954 with a portrait bust by Laurence Bradshaw; Marx's original tomb had had only humble adornment.^[9] In 1970 there was an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the monument using a homemade bomb.^[115]

The later Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm remarked that "One cannot say Marx died a failure" because, although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the leftist movements in Germany and Russia. Within 25 years of his death, the continental European socialist parties that acknowledged Marx's influence on their politics were each gaining between 15 and 47% in those countries with representative democratic elections.^[116]

Marx's thought[link]

Inspirations[link]

The philosophers G.W.F. Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach, whose ideas on dialectics heavily influenced Marx

Friedrich Engels

Marx's thought demonstrates influences from many thinkers, including but not limited to:

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy;^[117]
• The classical political economy (economics) of Adam Smith and David Ricardo;^[118]
• French socialist thought,^[118] in particular the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier;^[119][120]
• Earlier German philosophical materialism, particularly that of Ludwig Feuerbach;^[57]
• The working class analysis by Friedrich Engels.^[55]

Marx's view of history, which came to be called historical materialism (controversially adapted as the philosophy of dialectical materialism by Engels and Lenin) certainly shows the influence of Hegel's claim that one should view reality (and history) dialectically.^[117] However, Hegel had thought in idealist terms, putting ideas in the forefront, whereas Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialist terms, arguing for the primacy of matter over idea.^[4][117] Where Hegel saw the "spirit" as driving history, Marx saw this as an unnecessary mystification, obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical actions shaping the world.^[117] He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that one needed to set it upon its feet.^[117]

Though inspired by French socialist and sociological thought,^[118] Marx criticised utopian socialists, arguing that their favoured small scale socialistic communities would be bound to marginalisation and poverty, and that only a large scale change in the economic system can bring about real change.^[120]

The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism came from Engels's book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution.^[55]

Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist revolution would inevitably occur. However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world.^[8][9]

Philosophy and social thought[link]

Marx polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique, and thus he has been called "the first great user of critical method in social sciences."^[117][118] He criticised speculative philosophy, equating metaphysics with ideology.^[121] By adopting this approach, Marx attempted to separate key findings from ideological biases.^[118] This set him apart from many contemporary philosophers.^[8]

Human nature[link]

Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human history involves transforming human nature, which encompasses both human beings and material objects.^[122] Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves.^[123][124] For both Marx and Hegel, self-development begins with an experience of internal alienation stemming from this recognition, followed by a realisation that the actual self, as a subjective agent, renders its potential counterpart an object to be apprehended.^[124] Marx further argues that, by molding nature^[125] in desired ways,^[126] the subject takes the object as its own, and thus permits the individual to be actualised as fully human. For Marx, then, human nature—Gattungswesen, or species-being—exists as a function of human labour.^{[123][124][126]} Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that, in order for a subject to come to terms with its alienated object, it must first exert influence upon literal, material objects in the subject's world.^[127] Marx acknowledges that Hegel "grasps the nature of work and comprehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his own work",^[128] but characterises Hegelian self-development as unduly "spiritual" and abstract.^[129] Marx thus departs from Hegel by insisting that "the fact that man is a corporeal, actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only express his life in actual sensuous objects."^[127] Consequently, Marx revises Hegelian "work" into material "labour", and in the context of human capacity to transform nature the term "labour power".^[4]

Labour, class struggle, and false consciousness[link]

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

— Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto^[67])

Marx had a special concern with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labour power.^[130] He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation.^[131] As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception.^[130] Capitalism mediates social relationships of production (such as among workers or between workers and capitalists) through commodities, including labour, that are bought and sold on the market.^[130] For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labour—one's capacity to transform the world—is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss.^[130] Marx described this loss as commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behavior merely adapt.^[132]

Commodity fetishism provides an example of what Engels called "false consciousness",^[133] which relates closely to the understanding of ideology. By "ideology", Marx and Engels meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which contemporaries see as universal and eternal.^[134] Marx and Engels's point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths; they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests).^[4][135] An example of this sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the preface^[136] to his 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

—Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right^[137]

Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis argued that religion had as its primary social aim the promotion of solidarity, here Marx sees the social function of religion in terms of highlighting/preserving political and economic status quo and inequality.^[138]

Economy, history and society[link]

Marx's thoughts on labour were related to the primacy he gave to the economic relation in determining the society's past, present and future (see also economic determinism).^{[117][120][139]} Accumulation of capital shapes the social system.^[120] Social change, for Marx, was about conflict between opposing interests, driven, in the background, by economic forces.^[117] This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the conflict theory.^[139] In his evolutionary model of history, he argued that human history began with free, productive and creative work that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most apparent under capitalism.^[117] Marx noted that this was not an intentional process; rather, no individual or even no state can go against the forces of economy.^[120]

The organisation of society depends on means of production. Literally those things, like land, natural resources, and technology, necessary for the production of material goods and the relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production.^[139] Together these compose the mode of production, and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of distinct modes of production. Marx differentiated between base and superstructure, with the base (or substructure) referring to the economic system, and superstructure, to the cultural and political system.^[139] Marx regarded this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure as a major source of social disruption and conflict.^[139]

Despite Marx's stress on critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique of capitalism is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudal).^[4] Marx also never clearly discusses issues of morality and justice, although scholars agree that his work contained implicit discussion of those concepts.^[4]

Marx's view of capitalism was two sided.^[4][95] On one hand, Marx, in the 19th century's deepest critique of the dehumanising aspects of this system, noted that defining features of capitalism include alienation, exploitation and recurring, cyclical depressions leading to mass unemployment; on the other hand capitalism is also characterised by "revolutionizing, industrializing and universalizing qualities of development, growth and progressivity" (by which Marx meant industrialisation, urbanisation, technological progress, increased productivity and growth, rationality and scientific revolution), that are responsible for progress.^[4][95][117] Marx considered the capitalist class to be one of the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly improved the means of production, more so than any other class in history, and was responsible for the overthrow of feudalism and its transition to capitalism.^[120][140] Capitalism can stimulate considerable growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies and capital equipment.^[130]

According to Marx capitalists take advantage of the difference between the labour market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry input unit-costs are lower than output unit-prices. Marx called the difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus value had its source in surplus labour, the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive and what they can produce.^[4] Marx's dual view of capitalism can be seen in his description of the capitalists: he refers to them as to vampires sucking worker's blood, but at the same time,^[117] he notes that drawing profit is "by no means an injustice"^[4] and that capitalists simply cannot go against the system.^[120] The true problem lies with the "cancerous cell" of capital, understood not as property or equipment, but the relations between workers and owners – the economic system in general.^[120]

At the same time, Marx stressed that capitalism was unstable, and prone to periodic crises.^[5] He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labour.^[4] Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labour is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew.^[106] Marx believed that increasingly severe crises would punctuate this cycle of growth, collapse, and more growth.^[106] Moreover, he believed that in the long-term this process would necessarily enrich and empower the capitalist class and impoverish the proletariat.^[106][120] In section one of The Communist Manifesto Marx describes feudalism, capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process:

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged ... the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes ... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.

—Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto^[141]

Marx believed that those structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to socialism, or a post-capitalistic, communist society:

The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

—Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, The Communist Manifesto^[141]

Thanks to various processes overseen by capitalism, such as urbanisation, the working class, the proletariat, should grow in numbers and develop a class consciousness, in time realising that they have to change the system.^[117][120] Marx believed that if the proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolishing exploiting class, and introduce a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises.^[117] Marx argued that capitalism will end through the organised actions of an international working class:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

—Karl Marx, The German Ideology^[142]

In this new society the self-alienation would end, and humans would be free to act without being bound by the labour market.^[106] It would be a democratic society, enfranchising the entire population.^[120] In such a utopian world there would also be little if any need for a state, which goal was to enforce the alienation.^[106] He theorised that between capitalism and the establishment of a socialist/communist system, a dictatorship of the proletariat—a period where the working class holds political power and forcibly socialises the means of production—would exist.^[120] As he wrote in his "Critique of the Gotha Program", "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."^[143] While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (such as Britain, the US and the Netherlands), he suggested that in other countries with strong centralised state-oriented traditions, like France and Germany, the "lever of our revolution must be force."^[144]

Personal life[link]

Jenny Carolina and Jenny Laura Marx (1869). All the Marx daughters were named in honour of their mother, Jenny von Westphalen

Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Together had seven children, but partly owing to the poor living conditions they were forced to live in whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood.^[145] The children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–83); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–52); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–98) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). There are allegations that Marx also fathered a son, Freddy,^[30] out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth.^[146]

Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting 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, something which they believed made him resemble the historical Moors of North Africa, whilst he encouraged his children to call him 'Old Nick' and 'Charley'.^[147] He also bestowed nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family as well, referring to Friedrich Engels as 'General', his housekeeper Helene as 'Lenchen' or 'Nym', while one of his daughters, Jennychen, was referred to as 'Qui Qui, Emperor of China' and another, Laura, was known as 'Kakadou' or 'the Hottentot'.^[147]

Legacy[link]

Influence[link]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels monument in Marx-Engels-Forum, Berlin-Mitte

Marx is widely thought of as one of the most influential thinkers in history, who has had a significant influence on both world politics and intellectual thought, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the top "thinker of the millennium".^[11][12][8] Robert C. Tucker credits Marx with profoundly affecting ideas about history, society, economics, culture, politics, and the nature of social inquiry.^[148] Marx's biographer Francis Wheen considers the "history of the twentieth century" to be "Marx's legacy",^[149] whilst philosopher Peter Singer believes that Marx's impact can be compared with that of the founders of the two major world religions, Jesus Christ and Muhammad.^[150] Singer notes that "Marx's ideas brought about modern sociology, transformed the study of history, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature and the arts."^[150] Paul Ricœur calls Marx one of the masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.^[151] Philip Stokes says that Marx's ideas led to him becoming "the darling of both European and American intellectuals up until the 1960s".^[152] Marx has influenced disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology,^[153] media studies,^[154] political science, theater, history, sociological theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy.^[155]

In July 2005, 27.9% of listeners in a BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time poll selected Marx as their favorite thinker.^[156]

The reasons for Marx's widespread influence revolve around his ethical message; a "morally empowering language of critique" against the dominant capitalist society. No other body of work was so relevant to the modern times, and at the same time, so outspoken about the need for change.^[8] In the political realm, Marx's ideas led to the establishment of governments using Marxist thought to replace capitalism with communism or socialism (or augment it with market socialism) across much of the world, whilst his intellectual thought has heavily influenced the academic study of the humanities and the arts.

Marxism[link]

A Karl Marx monument in the German city Chemnitz, formerly the East German city Karl-Marx-Stadt (Karl Marx City)

Followers of Marx have drawn on his work to propose grand, cohesive theoretical outlooks dubbed "Marxism". This body of works has had significant influence on the both political and scientific scenes.^[157] The Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara summed up his own appeal to Marxism by stating that "the merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it, he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed."^[158]

Nevertheless, Marxists have frequently debated amongst themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to their contemporary events and conditions.^[157] The legacy of Marx's thought has become bitterly contested between numerous tendencies which each see themselves as Marx's most accurate interpreters, including (but not limited to) Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Luxemburgism, and libertarian Marxism.^[157] In academic Marxism, various currents have developed as well, often under influence of other views, resulting in structuralist Marxism, historical Marxism, phenomenological Marxism, Analytical Marxism and Hegelian Marxism.^[157]

Moreover, there is a distinction between "Marxism" and "what Marx believed"; for example, shortly before he died in 1883, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde, and to his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of lack of faith in the working class. After the French party split into a reformist and revolutionary party, some accused Guesde (leader of the latter) of taking orders from Marx; Marx remarked to Lafargue, "What is certain to me is [that, if this is Marxism, then] I myself am not [a] Marxist" (in a letter to Engels, Marx later accused Guesde of being a "Bakuninist").^[159]

Founder of social science[link]

Marx is typically cited, along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.^[10] In contrast to philosophers, Marx offered theories that could often be tested with the scientific method.^[8] Both Marx and Auguste Comte set out to develop scientifically justified ideologies in the wake of European secularisation and new developments in the philosophies of history and science. Whilst Marx, working in the Hegelian tradition, rejected Comtean sociological positivism, in attempting to develop a science of society he nevertheless came to be recognised as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning.^[42] In modern sociological theory, Marxist sociology is recognised as one of the main classical perspectives. For Isaiah Berlin, Marx may be regarded as the "true father" of modern sociology, "in so far as anyone can claim the title."^[160]

Debate over predictions and theories[link]

While many Marxist concepts are still of importance for modern social science, some specific predictions Marx made have been shown to be unlikely.^[8] Marx is often criticised for expecting a wave of socialist revolutions, originating in the most highly industrialised countries,^[161] to overturn capitalism. However others, pointing to Marx's encounter with late 19th-century Russian populism and Marx and Engels's preface to the second Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1882), have argued that Marx evinced a growing conviction in his late writings that revolution could in fact emerge first in Russia.^[162] Marx predicted the eventual fall of capitalism, to be replaced by socialism, yet since the late 20th century state socialism is in retreat, as the Soviet Union collapsed, and the People's Republic of China shifted towards a market economy.^[163] Additionally, his argument that profits are generated only through surplus labour has been challenged by the counterclaim that profits also come from investments in human capital and technology.^[8] Marx correctly predicted that over time, inequality would grow^[164] but he also believed that this would mean growing impoverishment of the growing worker class, increasingly exploited by the capitalists.^[8] The latter has also come true; as in the developed world, through liberal reforms, trade unions won many concessions, improving the situation of the workers (something that Marx considered very unlikely); in the more populated parts of the world such as Africa, India, and China the populations continue to grow and all the industry is moving there if it has not already established itself in the last two decades. Worldwide poverty has increased since the end of the 19th century especially considering that the richest are richer than ever but the poor have remained at the same level and the percentage has risen in the last 30 years.^{[8][165][166][167]} (Scholars have debated whether Marx's comments about the proletariat can be analyzed in the context of the working class).^[168] In addition to specific predictions, certain of Marx's theories, such as his labour theory of value, have also been criticised.^[4][118] However, in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, Greek government debt crisis,2008–2012 Spanish financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis some thinkers like Terry Eagleton, David Harvey, and David McNally have given renewed impetus to the debate on whether Marx was right that capitalism inherently tends towards crisis (which Marx discussed as the "contradictions of capital").^[169]

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Totalitarianism[link]

100 Mark der DDR note used in the German Democratic Republic. 100-Mark banknotes with Marx's portrait circulated from 1964 until monetary union with West Germany in July 1990.

While Marxist thought may be used to empower marginalised and dispossessed people, it has also been used to prop up governments who have utilised violence to remove those seen as impeding the revolution.^[8][118] In some instances, his ultimate goals have been used as justification for the end justifies the means logic.^[8] Moreover, contrary to his goal, his ideas have been used to promote dogmatism and intolerance.^[8] Polish historian Andrzej Walicki noted that Marx's and Engels's theory was the "theory of freedom", but a theory that, at the height of its influence, was used to legitimise the totalitarian socialist state of the Soviet Union.^[170] This abuse of Marx's thought is perhaps most clearly exemplified in Stalinist Marxism, described by critics as the "most widespread and successful form of mass indoctrination... a masterly achievement in transforming Marxism into the official ideology of a consistently totalitarian state."^[171] The controversy is further fueled as some left-wing theorists have tried to shield Marxism from any connection to the Soviet regime.^[172] Lastly, the undue focus on the Marxist thought in the former Eastern Bloc, often forbidding social science arguments from outside the Marxist perspective,^[173][174] led to a backlash against Marxism after the revolutions of 1989. In one example, references to Marx drastically decreased in Polish sociology after the fall of the revolutionary socialist governments, and two major research institutions which advocated the Marxist approach to sociology were closed.^[175]

Selected bibliography[link]

• The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law (1842)
• Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843
• On the Jewish Question, 1843
• Notes on James Mill, 1844
• Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 1844
• The Holy Family, 1845
• Theses on Feuerbach, 1845
• The German Ideology, 1845
• The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847
• Wage Labour and Capital, 1847
• Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848
• The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, 1852
• Grundrisse, 1857
• A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859
• Writings on the U.S. Civil War, 1861
• Theories of Surplus Value, 3 volumes, 1862
• Value, Price and Profit, 1865
• Capital, Volume I (Das Kapital), 1867
• The Civil War in France, 1871
• Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875
• Notes on Wagner, 1883
• Capital, Volume II (posthumously published by Engels), 1885
• Capital, Volume III (posthumously published by Engels), 1894

See also[link]

• Karl Marx House
• Marx Memorial Library
• Marx’s method
• Marx's notebooks on the history of technology
• Marxian Class Theory
• Mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx
• Pre-Marx socialists
• Karl Marx in film
• Marx Reloaded

References[link]

Footnotes[link]