Karl Marx;

Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx perceived by many as

the greatest historian of all times. His ideas shaped his age and
even still affect todays age. In October of 1835, Marx began
studying at the University of Bonn. It had a lively and rebellious
culture, and Marx enthusiastically took part in student life. In
his two semesters there, he was imprisoned for drunkenness
and disturbing the peace, incurred debts and participated in a
duel. At the end of the year, Marxs father insisted he enroll in
the more serious University of Berlin. In Berlin, he studied law
and philosophy and was introduced to the philosophy of G.W.F.
Hegel, who had been a professor at Berlin until his death in
1831. Marx was not initially enamoured with Hegel, but he soon
became involved with the Young Hegelians, a radical group of
students including Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach, who
criticized the political and religious establishments of the day.

In 1836, as he was becoming more politically zealous, Marx was

secretly engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, a sought-after
woman from a respected family in Trier who was four years his
senior. This, along with his increasing radicalism, caused his
father angst. In a series of letters, Marxs father expressed
concerns about what he saw as his sons demons, and
admonished him for not taking the responsibilities of marriage
seriously enough, particularly when his wife-to-be came from a
higher class.Marx did not settle down. He received his
doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841, but his radical
politics prevented him from procuring a teaching position. He
began to work as a journalist, and in 1842, he became the
editor of Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper in Cologne.
Just one year later, the government ordered the newspapers
suppression, effective April 1, 1843. Marx resigned on March
18th. Three months later, in June, he finally married Jenny von
Westphalen, and in October, they moved to Paris.

He explained the history of the society as the history of class

struggles. Marx believed and perpetuated the concept of
communism; the English dictionary defines communism as ( A
scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically, a
scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the
possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to
all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and
advantage of all.)

The rise of Marxist historiography.

Marx viewed history as an extension of dialectical materialism
to social phenomena, history for the first time acquired a
consistently scientific methodological basis. The emergence of
the materialist conception of history became a turning point in
the development of knowledge about social life. Marxism
proved that the moving forces of history are determined by
material production, by the rise, development, and decline of
different modes of production engendering the entire social
structure. The key to the investigation of the self-movement of
human society was found in the laws of development of the
modes of production. This indicated the way to a scientific
study of history as a single process, which with all its immense
variety and contradictoriness is governed by definite laws as
asserted by Lenin, Poln & Sobr(1998 p. 58). The application of
the doctrine of socioeconomic formations, as a guiding
methodological principle, to the analysis of concrete social
phenomena made it possible to correctly and accurately depict
the actual historical process. Using this principle, Marx
demonstrated that the objective course of history itself leads to
the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, to the
abolition of capitalism by the socialist revolution, and to the
victory of communism. Marxs revelation of the significance of
class struggle and revolution in history, of the world-historical
mission of the working class, and of the role of the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and the proletarian

party armed historical science with an understanding of the

chief and crucial problems of social development. In this
manner historical knowledge according to Marx was organically
united with practice in the revolutionary struggle of the
proletariat.
Marxs Das Kapital was of immense importance in the
development of Marxist historical science. With the appearance
of Das Kapital (the first volume was published in 1867), the
materialist conception of history was transformed from a
scientific hypothesis into a strict scientific theory, confirmed by
a comprehensive analysis of capitalism, a theory that became a
synonym for the only scientific perception of history (ibid., p.
140). Marx provided examples of the application of the Marxist
dialectical method not only in their work on general
philosophical and economic problems but also on specific
historical problems. This was reflected in such historical studies
as Marx The Class Struggle in France and The 18th Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte and Engels, The Peasant War in Germany and
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. In his
works Marx dealt most thoroughly with the history of capitalist
society, bourgeois revolutions, and the workers and national
liberation movement, although they also worked on many
cardinal problems of the history of precapitalist formations.
Marxs political activities were manifold from his first contacts
with working-class people in the early 1840s his repeated
organizational efforts; the German Communist League in
Brussels (1847);various workers and democratic associations in
subsequent years; the Manifesto of the Communist party
written with Engles and published in 1848; the International
Working Mens Association of 1864 with its several congresses
and its national section (ultimately dissolved in 1876 after a
struggle with Bakunin); the uniting of the various German
workers; parties in 1875; continuing relations with the Chartists
and with other British labor organizations efforts to assist
refugees after the fall of Paris Commune in 1871; and
throughout his life, a voluminous correspondence with

European and American socialists and sympathetic thinkers and

activists. In 1848, together with Engels in London, he joined the
communist league. He wrote an article called the Communist
Manifesto, this article sparked a wave of revolutions across
Europe as it portrayed the governments of the day as chaotic
and worth being overthrown.
In 1849, he relocated to his native land Prussia and extensively
against the Prussian autocracy. His articles were heavily
suppressed ,censored and abolished and he took refuge in
London, May 1849.
In 1857 Marx produced a 800 page manuscript on capital, land,
property, the state, foreign trade, and world market,
Grundrisse(Outlines); not published until 1941. In 1861, Marx
published volume 1 of Capital, regarding capitalist process of
production; entire three volume set published posthumously by
Engels. This was a compendium of critical analysis of capitalism
as a political economic theory, meant to reveal the economic
laws of the capitalist mode of production and of the class
struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production.
Marx used the term mode of production to refer to the specific
organization of economic production in a given society. A mode
of production includes the means of production used by a given
society, such as factories and other facilities, machines, and
raw materials. It also includes labour and the organization of
the labour force. The term relations of production refer to the
relationship between those who own the means of production
(the capitalists or bourgeoisie) and those who do not (the
workers or the proletariat). According to Marx, history evolves
through the interaction between the mode of production and
the relations of production. The mode of production constantly
evolves toward a realization of its fullest productive capacity,
but this evolution creates antagonisms between the classes of
people defined by the relations of productionowners and
workers.

Marx never lived to see some of his theories manifest but they
were later on developed by his followers into dialectical
materialism. His visions of the future largely failed to
materialize especially the idea of a classless society, a society
that has neither the rich nor the poor. However, this viewpoint
of having a classless society is considered by many utopian and
practically not applicable as societies have always had
inequalities and will forever have inqualities. His analysis of
class structure and class conflict have had profound influence
on history, sociology, and study of human culture.
Some of Marx greatest quotes and a summation of his ideas
include;
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
Meaning all the poor people have to do is to be brave, refuse to
be controlled the rich and revolt against them.
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the
fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the
ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the

antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.
The Communist Manifesto
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is
put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will
also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between
classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to
another will come to an end.
The Communist Manifesto

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 road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Marxist history subjects facts within historical method to a
causal system.
History depicts a clash of forces until those at bottom
overthrow their overlordshumanity engaged in a social and
economic struggle.
The ruling class owns an ideological hegemony; the oppressed
are led to believe they are not and that this is the natural order
of the world

Bently (1997, pg534) posits that

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic
nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human
history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of
ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter
and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion,
etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material
means, and consequently the degree of economic development
attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the
foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal
conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people
concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they
must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had
hitherto been the case.
Marx was the most hated and most calumniated man of his
time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported
him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or
ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders

upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb,

ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled
him. He was considered a voice of the voiceless, a man of the
masses and a friend of the oppressed. And he died beloved,
revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow
workers -from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of
Europe and America.
References:
- (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 58).
- COMPANION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY EDITED BY MICHAEL
BENTLEY Professor of Modern History University of St Andrews