- Order:
- Duration: 59:17
- Updated: 08 Apr 2013
- published: 13 Feb 2012
- views: 908860
- author: ImBigOnReddit
Language: english
Location: UK
Type | Public broadcasting |
---|---|
Industry | Mass media |
Predecessor(s) | British Broadcasting Company |
Founded | 1 January 1927 |
Founder(s) | John Reith (Director-General) George Villiers (Chairman) |
Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Lord Patten of Barnes (Chairman, BBC Trust) Mark Thompson (Director-General) |
Products | Broadcasting, radio, web portals |
Services | Television, radio, online |
Revenue | £4.741 bn |
Owner(s) | The Crown (Publicly owned) |
Website | bbc.co.uk |
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London.[1] It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff.[2][3][4] Its main responsibility is to provide impartial public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
The BBC is a semi-autonomous public service broadcaster[5] that operates under a Royal Charter[6] and a Licence and Agreement from the Home Secretary.[7] Within the United Kingdom its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee,[8] which is charged to all British households, companies and organisations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts;[9] the level of the fee is set annually by the British Government and agreed by Parliament.[10]
Outside the UK, the BBC World Service has provided services by direct broadcasting and re-transmission contracts by sound radio since the inauguration of the BBC Empire Service in December 1932, and more recently by television and online. Though sharing some of the facilities of the domestic services, particularly for news and current affairs output, the World Service has a separate Managing Director, and its operating costs have historically been funded mainly by direct grants from the British government. These grants were determined independently of the domestic licence fee and were usually awarded from the budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As such, the BBC's international content has traditionally represented – at least in part – an effective foreign policy tool of the British Government. The recent BBC World Service spending review has announced plans for the funding for the world service to be drawn from the domestic licence fee.
The Corporation's "guaranteed" income from the licence fee and the World Service grants are supplemented by profits from commercial operations through a wholly owned subsidiary, BBC Worldwide Ltd. The company's activities include programme- and format-sales, magazines including the Radio Times and book publishing. The BBC also earns additional income from selling certain programme-making services through BBC Studios and Post Production Ltd., formerly BBC Resources Ltd, another wholly owned trading subsidiary of the corporation. The BBC is sometimes referred to as "Auntie" and "the Beeb". The former is also used to refer to the BBC's sister corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
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The privately owned BBC was the world's first national broadcasting organisation[11] and was founded on 18 October 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. The original company was founded in 1922[12] by a group of six telecommunications companies—Marconi, Radio Communication Company, Metropolitan-Vickers (MetroVick), General Electric, Western Electric, and British Thomson-Houston (BTH)[13]—to broadcast experimental radio services. The first transmission was on 14 November of that year, from station 2LO, located at Marconi House, London.[14]
The British Broadcasting Company Ltd was created by the British General Post Office (GPO) and John Reith applied for a job with the existing company and later became its employee general manager. The company was wound-up and on 1 January 1927[15] a new non-commercial entity called the British Broadcasting Corporation established under a Royal Charter became successor in interest.
To represent its purpose and (stated) values, the Corporation adopted the coat of arms, including the motto "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation". The motto is generally attributed to Montague John Rendall, former headmaster of Winchester College, and member of the first BBC Board of Governors.[16] The motto is said to be a "felicitous adaptation" of Micah 4: 3 "nation shall not lift up a sword against nation".[17]
Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1932 using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by John Logie Baird. Limited regular broadcasts using this system began in 1934, and an expanded service (now named the BBC Television Service) started from Alexandra Palace in 1936, alternating between an improved Baird mechanical 240 line system and the all electronic 405 line Marconi-EMI system. The superiority of the electronic system saw the mechanical system dropped early the following year.[18]
Television broadcasting was suspended from 1 September 1939 to 7 June 1946 during the Second World War. A widely reported urban myth is that, upon resumption of service, announcer Leslie Mitchell started by saying, "As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted ..." In fact, the first person to appear when transmission resumed was Jasmine Bligh and the words said were "Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh ...?"[19]
The European Broadcasting Union was formed on 12 February 1950, in Torquay with the BBC among the 23 founding broadcasting organisations.
Competition to the BBC was introduced in 1955 with the commercial and independently operated television network of ITV. However, the BBC monopoly on radio services would persist into the 1970s. As a result of the Pilkington Committee report of 1962, in which the BBC was praised for the quality and range of its output, and ITV was very heavily criticised for not providing enough quality programming,[20] the decision was taken to award the BBC a second television channel, BBC2, in 1964, renaming the existing service BBC1. BBC2 used the higher resolution 625 line standard which had been standardised across Europe. BBC2 was broadcast in colour from 1 July 1967, and was joined by BBC 1 and ITV on 15 November 1969. The 405 line VHF transmissions of BBC1 (and ITV) were continued for compatibility with older television receivers until 1985.
Starting in 1964 a series of pirate radio stations (starting with Radio Caroline) came on the air, and forced the British government finally to regulate radio services to permit nationally based advertising-financed services. In response the BBC reorganised and renamed their radio channels. The Light Programme was split into Radio 1 offering continuous "Popular" music and Radio 2 more "Easy Listening".[21] The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as the four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London.[22]
In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1978 BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas of that year, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one.[23][24]
Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services.[citation needed]
The BBC Research Department has played a major part in the development of broadcasting and recording techniques. In the early days it carried out essential research into acoustics and programme level and noise measurement.[citation needed] The BBC was also responsible for the development of the NICAM stereo standard.
In recent decades, a number of additional channels and radio stations have been launched: Radio 5 was launched in 1990 as a sports and educational station, but was replaced in 1994 with Radio 5 Live, following the success of the Radio 4 service to cover the 1991 Gulf War. The new station would be a news and sport station. In 1997, BBC News 24, a rolling news channel, launched on digital television services and the following year, BBC Choice launched as the third general entertainment channel from the BBC. The BBC also purchased The Parliamentary Channel, which was renamed BBC Parliament. In 1999, BBC Knowledge launched as a multi media channel, with services available on the newly launched BBC Text digital teletext service, and on BBC Online. The channel had an educational aim, which was modified later on in its life to offer documentaries.
In 2002, a number of new channels and stations were made: BBC Knowledge was renamed BBC Four and became the BBC's arts and documentaries channel. In addition, CBBC, which had been a programming strand as Children's BBC since 1985, was split into CBBC and CBeebies with both new services getting a digital channel: the CBBC Channel and CBeebies Channel. In addition to the television channels, new digital radio stations were created: 1Xtra, 6 Music and BBC7. BBC 1Xtra was a sister station to Radio 1 and specialised in modern black music, BBC 6 Music specialised in alternative music genres and BBC7 specialised in archive, speech and children's programming.
The following few years resulted in repositioning of some of the channels to conform to a larger brand: in 2003, BBC Choice became BBC Three, with programming for younger generations and shocking real life documentaries, BBC News 24 became the BBC News Channel in 2008, and BBC Radio 7 became BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2011, with new programmes to supplement those broadcast on Radio 4. In 2008 another channel was launched, BBC Alba, a Scottish Gaelic service.
The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent Report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality. This led to resignations of senior management members at the time including the then Director General, Greg Dyke. In January 2007, the BBC released minutes of the Board meeting which led to Greg Dyke's resignation.[25]
Unlike the other departments of the BBC, the BBC World Service is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, more commonly known as the Foreign Office or the FCO, is the British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom abroad.
In the past few years, the BBC has experimented in high-definition television. In 2006, BBC HD launched as an experimental service, and became official in December 2007. The channel broadcasts HD simulcasts of programmes on BBC One, Two, Three and Four as well as repeats of some older programmes in HD. In 2010, a HD simulcast of BBC One launched: BBC One HD. The new channel uses HD versions of BBC One's schedule and uses upscaled versions of programmes not currently produced in HD.
On 18 October 2007, BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced a controversial plan to make major cuts and reduce the size of the BBC as an organisation. The plans included a reduction in posts of 2,500; including 1,800 redundancies, consolidating news operations, reducing programming output by 10% and selling off the flagship Television Centre building in London.[26] These plans have been fiercely opposed by unions, who have threatened a series of strikes, however the BBC have stated that the cuts are essential to move the organisation forward and concentrate on increasing the quality of programming.
On 20 October 2010, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that the television licence fee would be frozen at its current level until the end of the current charter in 2016. The same announcement revealed that the BBC would take on the full cost of running the BBC World Service and the BBC Monitoring service from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and will part finance the Welsh broadcaster S4C.[27]
Further cuts were announced on 6 October 2011, so the BBC could reach a total reduction in their budget of 20%, following the licence fee freeze in October 2010. Details include cutting staff by 2000 and sending a further 1000 to the MediaCityUK development, with BBC Three moving in 2016, the sharing of more programmes between stations and channels, sharing of radio news bulletins, more repeats in schedules, including the whole of BBC Two daytime and for some original programming to be reduced. Also, the BBC HD channel would be closed and replaced with an HD simulcast of BBC Two, however flagship programmes, other channels and full funding for CBBC and CBeebies would be retained.[28][29][30]
The BBC is a corporation, independent from direct government intervention, with its activities being overseen by the BBC Trust (formerly the Board of Governors).[31] General management of the organisation is in the hands of a Director-General, who is appointed by the Trust; he is the BBC's Editor-in-Chief and chairs the Executive Board.[32]
The BBC operates under a Royal Charter,[6] with the current Charter having come into effect on 1 January 2007 and running until 31 December 2016.[33] The Royal Charter is reviewed every 10 years.
The 2007 Charter specifies that the mission of the Corporation is to "inform, educate and entertain". It states that the Corporation exists to serve the public interest and to promote its public purposes: sustaining citizenship and civil society, promoting education and learning, stimulating creativity and cultural excellence, representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities, bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services, and taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.
This Charter also created the largest change in the governance of the Corporation since its inception. It abolished the sometimes controversial governing body, the Board of Governors, and replaced it with the BBC Trust and a formalised Executive Board.
Under the Royal Charter, the BBC must obtain a licence from the Home Secretary.[7] This licence is accompanied by an agreement which sets the terms and conditions under which BBC is allowed to broadcast.[7] It was under this Licence and Agreement (and the Broadcasting Act 1981) that the Sinn Féin broadcast ban from 1988 to 1994 was implemented.[34][35]
The BBC Trust was formed on 1 January 2007, replacing the Board of Governors as the governing body of the Corporation. The Trust sets the strategy for the corporation, assesses the performance of the BBC Executive Board in delivering the BBC's services, and appoints the Director-General.
BBC Trustees are appointed by the British monarch on advice of government ministers.[36] There are currently ten trustees with two vacancies, headed by the Chairman, Lord Patten of Barnes and the vice-chairman Diane Coyle. There are trustees for the four nations; England (Alison Hastings), Scotland (Bill Matthews), Wales (Elan Closs Stephens) and Northern Ireland (Rotha Johnston). The remaining four trustees are Richard Ayre, Anthony Fry, David Liddiment and Mehmuda Mian.[37]
The Executive Board is responsible for operational management and delivery of services within a framework set by the BBC Trust, and is headed by the Director-General, Mark Thompson. The Executive Board consists of both Executive and Non-Executive directors, with non-executive directors being sourced from other companies and corporations and being appointed by the BBC Trust.[38] The executive board is made up of the Director General, Mark Thompson, as well as the head of each of the main BBC departments, with the exception of the BBC North Group. These at present are George Entwistle, Director of BBC Vision; Tim Davie, Director of BBC Audio & Music; Ralph Rivera, Director of Future Media; Zarin Patel, Chief Financial Officer; Caroline Thomson, Chief Operating Officer and Helen Boaden, Director of News.[39]
In addition to these members, there are also five non-executive directors, these are currently Marcus Agius, the senior non-executive director and Chairman of Barclays; Robert Webb QC, the chairman of BBC Worldwide Ltd, former General Counsel and part of British Airways; Dr Mike Lynch OBE, the co-founder and Chief Executive of Autonomy Corporation; Val Gooding, the former Chief Executive of BUPA and Simon Burke the non-Executive Director.[39]
The Corporation is headed by Director General's office, which has overall control of the management and running of the BBC. Below this is the BBC Direction Group, which deals with inter departmental issues and any other tasks which the Executive board has delegated to it. Below the BBC Decision Group are the following seven departments covering all the BBC's output:[40]
All aspects of the BBC fall into one or more of the above departments, with the following exceptions:
The BBC has the second largest budget of any UK broadcaster with an operating expenditure of £4.26 billion in 2009/10[41] compared to £5.9 billion for British Sky Broadcasting,[42] £1.9 billion for ITV[43] and £214 million in 2007 for GCap Media (the largest commercial radio broadcaster).[44]
The principal means of funding the BBC is through the television licence, costing £145.50 per year per household (as of April 2010). Such a licence is required to receive broadcast television across Britain, however no licence is required to own a television used for other means, or for sound only radio sets (though a separate licence for these was also required for non-TV households until 1971). The cost of a television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law. A discount is available for households with only black-and-white television sets. A 50% discount is also offered to registered blind.[45]
The revenue is collected privately and is paid into the central government Consolidated Fund, a process defined in the Communications Act 2003. This TV Licensing collection is currently carried out by Capita, an outside agency. Funds are then allocated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Treasury and approved by Parliament via legislation. Additional revenues are paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to compensate for subsidised licences for eligible over-75-year-olds.
Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years,[46] with BBC Worldwide contributing some £145 million to the BBC's core public service business.
According to the BBC's 2009–2010 Annual Report[47] its income can be broken down, as follows:
The licence fee has, however, attracted criticism. It has been argued that in an age of multi stream, multi-channel availability, an obligation to pay a licence fee is no longer appropriate. The BBC's use of private sector company Capita Group to send letters to premises not paying the licence fee has been criticised, especially as there have been cases where such letters have been sent to premises which are up to date with their payments, or do not require a TV licence.[48]
The BBC uses an advertising campaign to inform customers of the requirement to pay the licence fee. These letters and adverts have been criticised by Conservative MPs Boris Johnson and Ann Widdecombe, for having a threatening nature and language used to scare evaders into paying.[49][50] Audio clips and television broadcasts are used to inform listeners of the BBC's comprehensive database.[51] There are a number of pressure groups campaigning on the issue of the licence fee.[52]
The following expenditure figures are from 2010/2011 and show expenditure per service, and major department.[53]
Service | Total Cost (£million) |
---|---|
BBC One Including Regions | 1,402.9 |
BBC Two | 528.3 |
BBC Three | 110.1 |
BBC Four | 67.1 |
CBBC and CBeebies | 139 |
BBC News and BBC Parliament | 69.1 |
BBC HD | 11.8 |
BBC Alba | 7.6 |
BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra | 59.1 |
BBC Radio 2 | 59.2 |
BBC Radio 3 | 50.7 |
BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra | 128 |
BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra | 77.8 |
BBC Radio 6 Music | 10.8 |
BBC Asian Network | 12.6 |
Nations & Local Radio | 240.7 |
BBC Online | 194.2 |
Total | 3,169 |
Department | Total cost (£million) |
---|---|
Television, including regions and productions for S4C | 2,368.1 |
Radio | 638.9 |
BBC Online | 194.2 |
BBC Red Button | 39.5 |
BBC Orchestras and Singers | 24.1 |
Development | 32.9 |
Digital Switchover | 80.3 |
Licence Fee Collection | 123.6 |
Restructuring | 29.6 |
Total | 3,531.2 |
Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London, is the official headquarters of the BBC. It is home to three of the ten BBC national radio networks, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 4 Extra. On the front of the building are statues of Prospero and Ariel, characters from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, sculpted by Eric Gill. Renovation of Broadcasting House began in 2002 and is scheduled for completion in 2012.
BBC Television and BBC News are currently based at BBC Television Centre, a purpose built television facility and the second built in the country located in White City, London. This facility has been host to a number of famous guests and programmes through the years, and its name and image is familiar with many British citizens. Nearby, the BBC White City complex contains numerous programme offices, housed in Centre House, the Media Centre and Broadcast Centre. It is in this area around Shepherd's Bush that the majority of BBC employees work.
As part of a major reorganisation of BBC property, the entire BBC News operation is expected to relocate from the News Centre at BBC Television Centre to the refurbished Broadcasting House to create what is being described as "one of the world's largest live broadcast centres".[54] Following completion Broadcasting House will also be home to most of the BBC's national radio stations, and the BBC World Service. The major part of this plan involves the demolition of the two post-war extensions to the building and construction of an extension[55] designed by Sir Richard MacCormac of MJP Architects. This move will concentrate the BBC's London operations, allowing them to sell Television Centre, which is expected to be completed by 2015.[56]
In addition to the scheme above, the BBC is in the process of making and producing more programmes outside of London. This involves producing more programmes at production centres such as Belfast, Glasgow and, most notably, Manchester. As part of the scheme, BBC North West is moving from New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, to MediaCityUK in Salford. Joining them are the BBC Sports, BBC Children's, Radio 5 Live, BBC Breakfast and BBC Philharmonic departments and services from London. MediaCityUK will therefore become the biggest staffing operation outside London.[57][58]
As well as the two main sites in London (Broadcasting House and White City), there are seven other major BBC production centres in the UK, mainly specialising in different productions. Broadcasting House Cardiff, has been home to BBC Cymru Wales, which specialises in drama production. Open since October 2011, and containing 7 new studios, Roath Lock[59] is notable as the home of productions such as Doctor Who and Casualty. Broadcasting House Belfast, home to BBC Northern Ireland, specialises in original drama and comedy, and has taken part in many co-productions with independent companies and notably with RTÉ in the Republic of Ireland. BBC Scotland, based in Pacific Quay, Glasgow is a large producer of programmes for the network, including several quiz shows. In England, the larger regions also produce some programming.
Previously, the largest 'hub' of BBC programming from the regions is BBC North West. At present they produce all Religious and Ethical programmes on the BBC, as well as other programmes such as A Question of Sport, however this is to be merged and expanded under the BBC North project, which involved the region moving from New Broadcasting House, Manchester, to MediaCityUK. BBC Midlands, based at The Mailbox in Birmingham, also produces drama and contains the headquarters for the English regions and the BBC's daytime output. Other production centres include Quarry Hill in Leeds, home of BBC Yorkshire, Broadcasting House Bristol, home of BBC West and famously the BBC Natural History Unit.
There are also many smaller local and regional studios throughout the UK, operating the BBC regional television services and the BBC Local Radio stations.
In the UK, BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC's flagship television channels. Several digital only stations are also broadcast: BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, and two children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies. Digital television is now in widespread use in the UK, with analogue transmission being phased out by December 2012.[61]
BBC One is a regionalised TV service which provides opt-outs throughout the day for local news and other local programming. These variations are more pronounced in the BBC 'Nations', i.e. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the presentation is mostly carried out locally on BBC One and Two, and where programme schedules can vary largely from that of the network. BBC Two variations exist in the Nations, however regions today rarely have the option to 'opt out' as regional programming now only exists on BBC One, and regional opt outs are not possible in the regions that have already undertaken the switch to digital television. BBC Two was also the first channel to be transmitted on 625 lines in 1964, then carry a small-scale regular colour service from 1967. BBC One would follow in November 1969.
A new Scottish Gaelic television channel, BBC Alba, was launched in September 2008. It is also the first multi-genre channel to come entirely from Scotland with almost all of its programmes made in Scotland. The service was initially only available via satellite but since June 2011 has been available to viewers in Scotland on Freeview and cable television.[62]
The BBC also has a HD channel, BBC HD, that launched on 9 June 2006 following a 12 month trial of the broadcasts. It became a proper channel in 2007, and screens HD programmes as simulcasts of the main network, or as repeats. The corporation has been producing programmes in the format for many years, and stated that it hoped to produce 100% of new programmes in HDTV by 2010.[63] On 3 November 2010, a high-definition simulcast of BBC One was launched, entitled BBC One HD.
In the Republic of Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the BBC channels are available in a number of ways. In these countries digital and cable operators carry a range of BBC channels these include BBC One, BBC Two and BBC World News, although viewers in the Republic of Ireland may receive BBC services via 'overspill' from transmitters in Northern Ireland or Wales, or via 'deflectors' – transmitters in the Republic which rebroadcast broadcasts from the UK, received off-air, or from digital satellite.
Since 1975, the BBC has also provided its TV programmes to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), allowing members of UK military serving abroad to watch and listen to them on two dedicated TV channels.
Since 2008, all the BBC channels are available to watch online, either through the channel website, or through the BBC iPlayer service. This online streaming ability came about following experiments with live streaming, involving streaming certain channels in the UK.[64]
The BBC has ten national radio stations, six stations serving the BBC Regions and numerous others covering the Local regions in England. Of the ten national stations, five are major stations and are available on FM, DAB and online. These are BBC Radio 1, offering new music and popular styles and being notable for its chart show; BBC Radio 2, playing Adult contemporary, country and soul music amongst many other genres; BBC Radio 3, playing classical and jazz music and home to the BBC Proms; BBC Radio 4, offering current affairs, factual, drama and comedy speech programmes and BBC Radio 5 Live, broadcasting 24 hour news, sport and talk programmes.
In addition to these five stations, the BBC also runs five additional stations that broadcast on DAB and online only. These stations supplement and expand on the big five stations, and were launched in 2002. BBC Radio 1Xtra sisters Radio 1, and broadcasts new black music and urban tracks. BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra sisters 5 Live and offers extra sport analysis, including broadcasting sports that previously were not covered. BBC Radio 6 Music offers alternative music genres and is notable as a platform for new artists.
BBC Radio 7, later renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra, provided archive drama, comedy and children's programming. Following the change to Radio 4 Extra, the service has dropped a defined children's strand in favour of family-friendly drama and comedy. In addition, new programmes to complement Radio 4 programmes were introduced such as Ambridge Extra, and Desert Island Discs revisited. The final station is the BBC Asian Network, providing music, talk and news to this section of the community. This station evolved out of Local radio stations serving certain areas, and as such this station is available on Medium Wave frequency in some areas of the Midlands.
As well as the national stations, the BBC also provides regional stations. In the 'Nations', six stations serve large areas of these regions. In Scotland, these are BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio nan Gaidheal, the latter providing programmes in Scots Gaelic; in Wales these are BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru, the latter providing programming in Welsh and in Northern Ireland there is BBC Radio Ulster with an opt out for the North West called BBC Radio Foyle. Furthermore, there are 40 BBC Local Radio stations in England and the Channel Islands, usually covering specific cities and their surrounding areas (Such as BBC Radio Bristol), for counties, or regions (Such as BBC Three Counties Radio), or geographic features (Such as BBC Radio Solent covering the South Coast).
As part of BBC Local Radio, the BBC also serves the Channel Islands, which strictly speaking are not part of the United Kingdom, through its TV News service and BBC Guernsey and BBC Radio Jersey. These services are funded from locally collected licence fees. However, despite this, the BBC does not offer Local Radio for the Isle of Man, primarily because the island has been served by the popular and long lasting independent commercial station, Manx Radio.
For a worldwide audience, the BBC World Service provides news, current affairs and information in 28 languages, including English, around the world and is available in over 150 capital cities. It is broadcast worldwide on shortwave radio, DAB and online and has an estimated weekly audience of 180 million listeners. Since 2005, it is also available on DAB in the UK, a step not taken before, due to the way it is funded. The service is funded by a Parliamentary Grant-in-Aid, administered by the Foreign Office, however following the Governments spending review in 2011, this funding will cease, and it will be funded for the first time through the Licence fee.[65][66] In recent years, some services of the World Service have been reduced; the Thai service ended in 2006[67] as did the Eastern European languages, with resources diverted instead into the new BBC Arabic Television.[68]
Historically, the BBC was the only legal radio broadcaster based in the UK mainland until 1967, when University Radio York (URY), then under the name Radio York, was launched as the first, and now oldest, legal independent radio station in the country. However, the BBC did not enjoy a complete monopoly before this as several Continental stations, such as Radio Luxembourg, broadcast programmes in English to Britain since the 1930s and the Isle of Man based Manx Radio began in 1964. Today, the BBC still has some of the most popular Radio stations, with BBC Radio 2 being the most popular of the network and the most popular in the country, with 12.9 million weekly listeners in 2006.[69]
BBC Programming is also available to other services and in other countries. Since 1943, the BBC has provided radio programming to the British Forces Broadcasting Service, which broadcasts in countries where British troops are stationed. BBC Radio 1 is also carried in the United States and Canada on Sirius XM Radio (online streaming only).
The BBC is a patron of The Radio Academy.[70]
BBC News is the largest broadcast news gathering operation in the world,[71] providing services to BBC domestic radio as well as television networks such as the BBC News, BBC Parliament and BBC World News. In addition to this, news stories are available on the BBC Red Button service, Ceefax and BBC News Online. In addition to this, the BBC has been developing new ways to access BBC News, as a result has launched the service on BBC Mobile, making it accessible to mobile phones and PDAs, as well as developing alerts by e-mail, digital television, and on computers through a desktop alert.
Ratings figures suggest that during major crises such as the 7 July 2005 London bombings or a Royal Event, the UK audience overwhelmingly turns to the BBC's coverage as opposed to its commercial rivals.[72] On 7 July 2005, the day that there were a series of coordinated bomb blasts on London's public transport system, the BBC Online website recorded an all time bandwidth peak of 11 Gb/s at 12:00 on 7 July. BBC News received some 1 billion total hits on the day of the event (including all images, text and HTML), serving some 5.5 terabytes of data. At peak times during the day there were 40,000 page requests per second for the BBC News website. The previous day's announcement of the 2012 Olympics being awarded to London caused a peak of around 5 Gbit/s. The previous all time high at BBC Online was caused by the announcement of the Michael Jackson verdict, which used 7.2 Gbit/s.[73]
The BBC's online presence includes a comprehensive news website and archive. It was launched as BBC Online, before being renamed BBCi, then bbc.co.uk, before it was rebranded back as BBC Online. The website is funded by the Licence fee, but uses GeoIP technology, allowing advertisements to be carried on the site when viewed outside of the UK.[74] The BBC claims the site to be "Europe's most popular content-based site"[75] and states that 13.2 million people in the UK visit the site's more than two million pages each day.[76] According to Alexa's TrafficRank system, in July 2008 BBC Online was the 27th most popular English Language website in the world,[77] and the 46th most popular overall.[78]
The centre of the website is the Homepage, which features a modular layout. Users can choose which modules, and which information, is displayed on their homepage, allowing the user to customise it. This system was first launched in December 2007, becoming permanent in February 2008, and has undergone a few aesthetical changes since then.[79] The Homepage then has links to other micro-sites, such as BBC News Online, Sport, Weather, TV and Radio. As part of the site, every programme on BBC Television or Radio is given its own page, with bigger programmes getting their own micro-site, and as a result it is often common for viewers and listeners to be told website addresses (URLs) for the programme website.
Another large part of the site also allows users to watch and listen to most Television and Radio output live and for seven days after broadcast using the BBC iPlayer platform, which launched on 27 July 2007, and initially used peer-to-peer and DRM technology to deliver both radio and TV content of the last seven days for offline use for up to 30 days, since then video is now streamed directly. Also, through participation in the Creative Archive Licence group, bbc.co.uk allowed legal downloads of selected archive material via the internet.[80]
The BBC has often included learning as part of its online service, running services such as BBC Jam, Learning Zone Class Clips and also runs services such as BBC WebWise and First Click which are designed to teach people how to use the internet. BBC Jam was a free online service, delivered through broadband and narrowband connections, providing high-quality interactive resources designed to stimulate learning at home and at school. Initial content was made available in January 2006 however BBC Jam was suspended on 20 March 2007 due to allegations made to the European Commission that it was damaging the interests of the commercial sector of the industry.[81]
In recent years some major on-line companies and politicians have complained that BBC Online receives too much funding from the television licence, meaning that other websites are unable to compete with the vast amount of advertising-free on-line content available on BBC Online.[82] Some have proposed that the amount of licence fee money spent on BBC Online should be reduced—either being replaced with funding from advertisements or subscriptions, or a reduction in the amount of content available on the site.[83] In response to this the BBC carried out an investigation, and has now set in motion a plan to change the way it provides its online services. BBC Online will now attempt to fill in gaps in the market, and will guide users to other websites for currently existing market provision. (For example, instead of providing local events information and timetables, users will be guided to outside websites already providing that information.) Part of this plan included the BBC closing some of its websites, and rediverting money to redevelop other parts.[84][85]
On 26 February 2010 The Times claimed that Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, proposed that the BBC's web output should be cut by 50%, with online staff numbers and budgets reduced by 25% in a bid to scale back BBC operations and allow commercial rivals more room.[86] On 2 March 2010, the BBC reported that it will cut its website spending by 25% and close BBC 6 Music and Asian Network, as part of Mark Thompson's plans to make " a smaller, fitter BBC for the digital age".[87][88]
BBC Red Button is the brand name for the BBC's interactive digital television services, which are available through Freeview (digital terrestrial), as well as Freesat, Sky (satellite), and Virgin Media (cable). Unlike Ceefax, the service's analogue counterpart, BBC Red Button is able to display full-colour graphics, photographs, and video, as well as programmes and can be accessed from any BBC channel. The service carries News, Weather and Sport 24 hours a day, but also provides extra features related to programmes specific at that time. Examples include viewers to play along at home to gameshows, to give, voice and vote on opinions to issues, as used alongside programmes such as Question Time. At some points in the year, when multiple sporting events occur, some coverage of less mainstream sports or games are frequently placed on the Red Button for viewers to watch. Frequently, other features are added unrelated to programmes being broadcast at that time, such as the broadcast of the Doctor Who animated episode Dreamland in November 2009.
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC responsible for the commercial exploitation of BBC programmes and other properties, including a number of television stations throughout the world. It was formed following the restructuring of its predecessor, BBC Enterprises, in 1995.
The company owns and administers a number of commercial stations around the world operating in a number of territories and on a number of different platforms. The channel BBC Entertainment shows current and archive entertainment programming to viewers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with the BBC Worldwide channels BBC America and BBC Canada (Joint venture with Shaw Media) showing similar programming in the North America region and UKTV in the Australasia region. The company also airs two channels aimed at children, an international CBeebies channel and BBC Kids, a joint venture with Knowledge Network Corporation, which airs programmes under the CBeebies and BBC K brands. The company also runs the channels BBC Knowledge, broadcasting factual and learning programmes, and BBC Lifestyle, broadcasting programmes based on themes of Food, Style and Wellbeing. In addition to this, BBC Worldwide runs an internation version of the channel BBC HD, and provides HD simulcasts of the channels BBC Knowledge and BBC America.
BBC Worldwide also distributes the 24-hour international news channel BBC World News. The station is separate from BBC Worldwide to maintain the station's neutral point of view, but is distributed by BBC Worldwide. The channel itself is the oldest surviving entity of its kind, and has bases and correspondents in over 200 countries. As officially surveyed it is available to more than 274 million households, significantly more than CNN's estimated 200 million.
In addition to these international channels, BBC Worldwide also owns, together with Virgin Media, the UKTV network of ten channels. These channels contain BBC archive programming to be rebroadcast on their respective channels: Alibi, drama; Blighty, British-oriented; Dave (slogan: "The Home of Witty Banter"); Eden, nature; GOLD, comedy; Good Food, cookery; Home, home and garden; Really, female programming; Watch, entertainment and Yesterday, history programming.
In addition to these channels, many BBC programmes are sold via BBC Worldwide to foreign television stations with comedy, documentaries and historical drama productions being most popular. In addition, BBC television news appears nightly on many Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States, as do reruns of BBC programmes such as EastEnders, and in New Zealand on TV One.
In addition to programming, BBC Worldwide produces material to accompany programmes. The company maintained the publishing arm of the BBC, and is currently the third-largest publisher of consumer magazines in the United Kingdom.[89] BBC Magazines, formerly known as BBC Publications, publishes the Radio Times as well as a number of magazines that support BBC programming such as BBC Top Gear, BBC Good Food, BBC Sky at Night, BBC History, BBC Wildlife and BBC Music. This department included independent magazine publisher Origin Publishing, which BBC Worldwide owned between 2004 and 2006.[90]
BBC Worldwide also publishes books, to accompany programmes such as Doctor Who under the BBC Books brand, and also owns the biggest travel guidebook and digital media publisher in the world, Lonely Planet. Soundtrack albums, talking books and sections of radio broadcasts are also sold under the brand BBC Records, with DVD's also being sold and licensed in large quantities to consumers both in the UK and abroad under the 2 Entertain brand. Archive programming and classical music recordings are sold under the brand BBC Legends.
The BBC employs staff orchestras, a choir, and supports two amateur choruses, based in BBC venues across the UK; the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Big Band based in London, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, the BBC Concert Orchestra based in Watford and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff. It also buys a selected number of broadcasts from the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast. Many famous musicians of every genre have played at the BBC, such as The Beatles (The Beatles Live at the BBC is one of their many albums). The BBC is also responsible for the United Kingdom coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest, a show with which the broadcaster has been associated for over 50 years.
The BBC operates in other ventures in addition to their broadcasting arm. In addition to broadcasting output on television and radio, some programmes are also displayed on the BBC Big Screens located in several central city locations. The BBC and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office also jointly run BBC Monitoring, which monitors radio, television, the press and the internet worldwide. The BBC also developed several computers throughout the 1980s, most notably the BBC Micro, which ran alongside the corporation's educational aims and programming.
Staff at the BBC are normally represented by BECTU, along with journalistic staff by the NUJ and electrical staff by Unite. Union membership is optional, staff are not automatically covered by a union, and is paid for by staff members and not by the BBC.
Until the development, popularisation, and domination of television, radio was the broadcast medium upon which people in the United Kingdom relied. It "reached into every home in the land, and simultaneously united the nation, an important factor during the Second World War".[91] The BBC introduced the world's first "high-definition" 405-line television service in 1936, and apart from suspending service throughout World War II until 1946, was the only television broadcaster in the UK until 1955. "The BBC's monopoly was broken in 1955, with the introduction of Independent Television (ITV)",[92] This heralded the transformation of television into a popular and dominant medium. Nevertheless, "throughout the 1950s radio still remained the dominant source of broadcast comedy".[92] Further, the BBC was the only legal radio broadcaster until 1968 (when URY obtained their first licence).[93]
Even since the advent of commercial television and radio, the BBC has remained one of the main elements in British popular culture through its obligation to produce TV and radio programmes for mass audiences.[citation needed] However, the arrival of BBC2 allowed the BBC also to make programmes for minority interests in drama, documentaries, current affairs, entertainment and sport. Examples are cited such as I, Claudius, Civilisation, Tonight, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Doctor Who and Pot Black, but other examples can be given in each of these fields as shown by the BBC's entries in the British Film Institute's 2000 list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.[94] The export of BBC programmes through both services like the BBC World Service and BBC World News, as well as the channels operated by BBC Worldwide mean that BBC productions can now be experienced worldwide.
The term BBC English (Received Pronunciation) refers to the former use of Standard English with this accent. However, the organisation now makes more use of regional accents in order to reflect the diversity of the UK, though clarity and fluency are still expected of presenters.[95] From its "starchy" beginnings, the BBC has also become more inclusive, and now attempts to accommodate the interests of all strata of society and all minorities, because they all pay the licence fee.[96]
Competition from Independent Television, Channel 4, Sky and other broadcast television stations, has lessened the BBC's influence, but such public broadcasting remains a major influence on British popular culture.[97]
Older domestic UK audiences often refer to the BBC as "the Beeb", a nickname originally dubbed by Peter Sellers in The Goon Show in the 1950s, when he referred to the "Beeb Beeb Ceeb". It was then borrowed, shortened and popularised by Kenny Everett.[98] Another nickname, now less commonly used, is "Auntie", said to originate from the old-fashioned "Auntie knows best" attitude (but possibly a sly reference to the "aunties" and "uncles" who were presenters of children's programmes in early days)[99] in the days when John Reith, the BBC's first director general, was in charge. The two nicknames have also been used together as "Auntie Beeb",[100] and Auntie has been used in out-take programmes such as Auntie's Bloomers.[101]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: BBC |
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Louis Theroux | |
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Louis Theroux, 2009 |
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Born | Louis Sebastian Theroux 20 May 1970 Singapore |
Residence | Harlesden, London, United Kingdom |
Citizenship | British, American[1] |
Education | Modern history (1st) |
Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
Occupation | Broadcaster |
Known for | Documentaries Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends When Louis Met… |
Religion | None (atheist) |
Partner | Nancy Strang[2] |
Children | 2[2] |
Parents | Paul Theroux, Anne Castle |
Relatives | Marcel Theroux (brother) Alexander Theroux (uncle) Justin Theroux (cousin) |
Website | |
www.louistheroux.com |
Louis Sebastian Theroux (/θəˈruː/ LOO-ee thə-ROO;[3] born 20 May 1970) is an English broadcaster best known for his documentaries in the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, his BBC2 Specials and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux and brother Marcel Theroux. He currently works with the BBC producing his documentaries and popular TV series.
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Theroux is the youngest son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux (who is of French-Canadian and Italian descent).[4] His mother, Anne Castle, was Paul's first, British, wife. His elder brother is the writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux.[2] He is the cousin of American actor Justin Theroux. He moved to the UK when he was four, and was brought up in London.
Theroux was educated for a couple of years at Allfarthing Primary School then moved to Westminster School (where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish). Another of his contemporaries was Liberal Democrat politician, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with whom he travelled to America.[5] He then went to Magdalen College, Oxford where he gained a first class degree in modern history and was noted for his film reviews for the Grapevine magazine.
His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative free weekly newspaper in San Jose, California. In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy magazine. He was also working as a correspondent on Michael Moore's TV Nation series, for which he provided segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon ladies in the Amazon, the Jerusalem syndrome, and the attempts by the Ku Klux Klan to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC, out of which came Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. He has guest-written for a number of publications including Hip-Hop Connection and he continues to write for The Idler.
In Weird Weekends (1998–2000), Theroux followed marginal, mostly American subcultures like survivalists, Black nationalists, White supremacists and porn stars, often by living among or close to the people involved. Often, his documentary method subtly exposed the contradictions or farcical elements of some seriously held beliefs. Theroux himself describes the aim of the series as
“ | Setting out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it's almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don't have to play up that stuff. I'm not a matinee idol disguised as a nerd. | ” |
Despite much call for a complete DVD set of Weird Weekends only selected episodes have ever been available for purchase.
In When Louis Met... (2000–02), Theroux accompanied a different British celebrity in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did so. His episode about the DJ and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile When Louis Met Jimmy was voted one of the top fifty documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain's Channel 4. In When Louis Met the Hamiltons, the disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine were arrested following false allegations of indecent assault during the course of filming. In When Louis Met Max Clifford, Max Clifford tried to set Louis up. However, it backfired when Max Clifford was caught lying, as the crew was still recording his live microphone during a conversation. After this celebrity series concluded, a retrospective was aired, called Life with Louis. He was meant to do a similar programme with Michael Jackson before Martin Bashir completed his documentary for ITV, but it was cancelled.[citation needed]
Selected episodes of When Louis Met... were included as bonus content on a Best-Of collection of Weird Weekends. The entire series has never been released on DVD.
In these special programmes, beginning in 2003, Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more natural tone. In March 2006, he signed a new deal with the BBC to make 10 films over the course of three years.[6] Subjects for the specials include criminal gangs in Lagos, Neo-Nazis in America, ultra-Zionists in Israel and child psychiatry. A 2007 special, The Most Hated Family in America, received strong critical praise from the international media.
His first book, The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, was published in Britain in 2005. In this book, Theroux returns to America to find out what has happened in the lives of some of the people he featured in his television programmes since he last saw them.[2]
He lives in the London district of Harlesden with his partner, Nancy Strang, a TV director, and his two sons.[2][7]
Nominated: Outstanding Informational Series for TV Nation, the Michael Moore series to which he contributed.
Won: Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News) for Weird Weekends
Nominated: Best Presenter for When Louis Met…
Journalists John Safran and Harmon Leon cite him[citation needed] as an "important influence".
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Marx in 1875 |
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Born | Karl Heinrich Marx 5 May 1818 Trier, Kingdom of Prussia |
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Died | 14 March 1883 London, United Kingdom |
(aged 64)
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
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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]
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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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.
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:
“ | On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever.[114] | ” |
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 demonstrates influences from many thinkers, including but not limited to:
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]
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]
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]
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.
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]
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]
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]
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.
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]
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]
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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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]
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