Karl Marx: The Most Influential Figure Of The Twentieth Century

Do you see the world in terms of groups where one is privileged and one is underprivileged? If you do, then you probably share a perspective or two with Karl Marx, a German economist whose works and ideas are, even to this day, studied and used by many different philosophers, economists, sociologists, historians, and politicians. Marx view the world as groups who were either advantaged or disadvantaged, with nothing in the in between of them. In his time, Marx’s ideas were seen as so drastic that he was viewed as a motivation to revolutionists as well as a threat by the leaders of state governments. As Karl Marx is one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, although he lived in the nineteenth century, his legacy lived

Some things that are also seen in Smith’s philosophy are the general ideas of human rights and democracy. In Smith’s idealized viewpoint of the world, a capitalist economy would stabilize itself by each person holding out for themselves and acting in their own self-interest. The prices of things would regulate at the lowest possible, yet practical rates, supply would quickly react to its demand, and employment would shift to the areas in which it was most

In this time, the advancement of capitalism crafted undesirable living standards and violence between classes. During the early 19th century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher of the late Enlightenment, came up with his own theory of the dialectic, which explained that history’s completion though different conflicting time periods was the process of a perfect higher power revealing Himself. Hegel’s notions about the tension and the progression of history toward perfection had a weighty influence over many of the following philosophies, including Marx. Both Marx and his concurrent partner, Engels, were heavily influenced by both Ludwig Feuerbach and Moses Hess. Feuerbach rejected Hegel’s idealism and emphasized both materialism and humanistic atheism. However, Hess challenged Hegel’s view of man’s inert role in history and emphasized that history was formed by man’s own actions, and also converted both Marx and Engels to the communist cause in