Karl Marx Essays (279 words) - Karl Marx, Economic Ideologies

Karl Marx Karl Marx Karl Marx was a German scholar who lived in the nineteenth century. He spent most of his life studying, thinking and writing about history and economics. A many years of study, much of it spent in England, he believed that he understood more deeply than anyone who had ever lived before him why there is injustice i world. He said that all injustice and inequality is a result of one underlying conflict in society. He called it a 'class struggle', that is, a conflict bet the class of people who can afford to own money- producing businesses, whom he called 'capitalists' or 'the bourgeosie', and the class of people who do not surplus money to buy businesses and who are therefore forced to work for wage whom he called 'workers'. Marx said that, because it was always in the economic interest of capita to take advantage of or 'exploit' workers, nothing could persuade capitalists change their ways. In other words, peaceful progess toward equality and social justice was impossible. The only way to establish justice, he said, was for t workers to overthrow the capitalists by means of violent revolution. He urged workers around the world to revolt against their rulers. Workers of the world unite! he wrote. You have nothing to lose but your chains. Another thing Marx taught was that organized religion, the churches, help capitalists to keep the workers quiet and obedient. Religion, according to Mar 'the opiate of the masses'. The church tells working people to forget about the injustice they meet in their lives and to think instead of how wonderful it will in the after- life when they go to heaven. Marx, with his colleague, Engels, spread his ideas in two famous books, Capital' and 'The Communist Manifesto'. Philosophy