Karl Marx

Points: A champion of the have-nots — Life-story of Marx — His Philosophy — His follower, Lenin.

             Karl Marx is a name to conjure with. He is one of the very few men who have changed the course of history by their thoughts and writings. A man of great intellect he will be ever remembered as the champion of the have-nots and a great leader of the working class.

             Karl Marx was born in 1818 in a Jewish family in Germany. He was a very meritorious student and studied in the universities of Bonn and Berlin. Later on, be became a Doctorate in Philosophy. A great scholar, he was also a great fighter against social injustice. He opposed the anti-peasant law passed by the German Government and consequently was banished from his fatherland. He came to Paris where he met his Life-Long friend and associate Engels. Because of his revolutionary activities he had to flee from Paris and come to Brussels, and banished from Brussels he came at last to stay in London.

             For years Marx studied like a devoted student in the British Museum. In 1848 he, in collaboration with Engels, published the famous pamphlet Communist Manifesto in which he said, “The workers have nothing to lose but chains”, and gave a call to the workers of the world to “unite”. He founded the First International Association of Workers and wrote his immortal book Das Kapital. He propounded a new philosophy known as Dialectical Materialism as opposed to Dialectical Idealism of Hegel According to this philosophy, economic relations determine history. The history of mankind, he said, is the history of its class struggle. He predicted that the state will wither away when the division of classes will cease and full socialism will be established. Marx also wrote on India struggling under the British rule.

             V. I. Lenin of Russia was a follower of Marx. Lenin and the other Marxists of Russia, known as Bolsheviks, led the socialist revolution in  Russia and established the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). This was in 1919. But Lenin’s Guru, Karl Marx, the prophet of Communist State, had died long ago on March 14, 1883.