Karl Marx Research Paper

Karl Marx was a man who was earthy in a way and yet extremely millenarian in other ways. He was a combination of absolute certitude and searching analysis. Marx was a prophet in a sense, but a philosophical and rational one. Marx’s weapons were historical analysis and a firm materialist and determinist philosophical grounding. He connected humanistic concerns to materialistic roots, in this he was not only a positivist but an evolutionist. How does one relate human concerns to material laws? This is a matter of deep faith. And Marx made this explicit leap, without philosophical obfuscations and qualifications. It is this certainty of Marx about the roots and purposes of human society, a quality he shared with Rousseau, that gave his message

Marx deepened and connected ideas and exemplified certain tends, giving a body and structure to socialist thought, that had been rather vague and amorphous. Marx connected Hegel to Darwin, Newton and Durkheim, grounding one and elevating the other. He created a break and a new beginning in European thought , and was a distinct kink in the trend that began with the Renaissance. In our own time Focualt had has a similar impact. Marx combined thought and action in a unique manner, and it was his rationality and certitude that made him such a convincing prophet. Marx matched Durkheim for social research and analysis, he matched Kant for philosophical depth and Adam Smith for economic accuracy and trenchancy. He was multifaceted and at ease in a variety of different mediums. He was holistic in his approach and yet not amorphous, his problems and solutions were clear-cut, his analysis well directed. Marx never lost his curiosity or his crusading spirit, a certain broadness of outlook and a surprising lack of

Marx asked meaningful questions and gave meaningful answers. His was an explicit battle call, and yet he addressed himself in a number of voices and facets and many could take different things from him. His masks were various and yet there was a connecting thread. There was immediacy, a sharpness and a vivid sense of life in Marx, an urgent sense of action, an optimism, a proud faith in man and his potential, and a fearless roar of affirmation on behalf of the wretched of the earth. Marx lit a light that illuminated many a troubled mind and spirit in the stormy seas of modern history. And yet Marx was not alone, he was in a long tradition, of Spinoza , of Plato , even of Socrates, the socially engaged questioner, and this trope has endured, and found many new incarnations, an existential niche that has been ably filled by many, a faith and a path, a rationality that filled with content what would otherwise after been pattern less and empty. Without Marx the oppressed would never have seen a ladder through which to rise or articulate their half felt convictions, the Chinese and Vietnamese peasantry, the Russian workers, the African activists, would have faced a far less rational and intelligible