The Life of Karl Marx and His Impact on The Society

Karl Marx was one of the founders of the founders of sociology and his ideas about society are still very much relevant to this day. Marx believed that, as societies grew, people began to grow distant in economic class due to their place in the hierarchy. Marx even predicted a protest among the workers soon because of the extreme disparities between the owners and the workers. “Marx also believed that the fall of capitalism would cause a rise of communism which would be more equitable for everyone in society” (Openstax 1.2). Marx had many theories that did not become truth in his lifetime, but he predicted that it was the only solution to the process of events that were leading up to the death of capitalism. Marx identified as holding a view in conflict theory, which states that society is in constant competition with individuals fighting for power and time. The inequalities shine at the extremes but are certainly equitable in the middle-ground, so it is the individual’s responsibility to push towards the top no matter the cost.

Marx was born on May 5th, 1818 in a small town in southwestern Germany, where he was the oldest surviving boy in a family of nine children. He was born into an upper-middle class family, his father was a lawyer and his mother came from wealth. Both of his parents were Jewish, but his father converted the Lutheranism due to certain laws that stopped him from attaining a higher position in society. Marx often identified as an atheist, even though he had many experiences with rabbis, who he ascended from. Marx was described as a young energetic child who often got into trouble, even though he was homeschooled by his father until he was twelve years old. He then started high school, where his head master became involved in his early philosophical ideas and urged him to continue. His head master, however, was all for teaching liberal ideas to his students and employed only teachers who held the same ideology. The school began to catch a reputation and the authorities caught wind of this and decided to investigate the head master and his teachers. People thought his way of teaching was dangerous to students and could affect the outcome of their children. Marx graduated at the age of 17 and decided to continue his education at a University.

He attended Bonn University as a law student in late 1835. Marx, however, had trouble completing all his assignments and even had trouble showing up at all. The following semester wasn’t any better for him as he rarely showed up for school, because he was out drinking at the local bars instead of doing his homework. It got so bad for Marx, that he was actually arrested for public intoxication. A year or so of this continued and Marx kept flunking out of his classes or barely passing them at all. His father was extremely angry that Marx would waste his life away, instead of studying to become a lawyer. So, he transferred Marx to the University of Berlin as a punishment and told Marx that he better get serious with his education or there would be serious consequences. Instead of taking his fathers advice, he insisted on going to philosophical rallies with his new fiancé he met in his hometown. He became extremely interested in many previous philosophers’ ideas and began studying their papers and treaties. Later in 1838 Marx’s father passed away and this took a toll on him. He had lost his father, who he respected tremendously, and he had lost his financial benefits his father gave him. He soon found out that he was on his own with his fiancé.

Marx decided to change up his major of being a lawyer to a philosopher as he decided that was his true passion in life. Remembering that he had no money to study and become a philosopher, Marx became a journalist. He joined a very radical newspaper company called, Rhineland News, who expressed their radical ideas about the occupation of Prussia. Good luck was on his side, however, because Marx had worked his way up and became chief editor of the newspaper company. This is where I believe Marx started to convey his philosophical ideas into text that others could read. He started writing about communism and the effect it had on governments and the people living under the government. Although, many sided with his ideology, he criticized one of the Russian Monarchs who then had the authorities shut down his paper and cut off his ideology. Marx was again, unemployed and broke. However, that didn’t stop him and his finance from getting married soon after.

Moving on from Marx’s early life and struggles as a wanna-be philosopher, Marx began to question what it meant to be free. Marx surprised many philosophers and other around him when he asked this question, as no one really had thought about it in that way before. Marx ironically laid out the foundation for the conflict theory. He focused on power, inequality, and what it meant to be free. Marx believed that everyone had to work together in order to survive as a species and that this would create a hierarchy in society. A sort of natural hierarchy, where the most powerful, or most skilled, were at the top and the useless were at the bottom. Marx and many other philosophers knew about this theory before, but Marx believed that it was up to the individual to do whatever it takes to get to the top, no matter the cost. He often thought of prehistoric societies as communist societies because everyone was equal and working together towards a common goal. However, later on in society, Marx noted that people who were at the top of the hierarchy didn’t have to work at all to be fed the most and the people at the bottom weren’t even close to being equal to the ones at the top and those people had to work and provide for the upper class group. This is where Marx drew the line between natural hierarchies and social hierarchies. Because natural hierarchies are due to skill and strength, where social hierarchies are determined by class or money. Marx believed this was due to labor and how the resources of a society were distributed throughout. Basically, in modern terms, this can be described as a basic economy and this was the most important aspect of life to him. “Even though Marx did not write a great deal on gender, it was an essential category for understanding the division of labor, production, and society in general” (Matwijkiw 83). He wanted to figure out how a change in economy had an impact on hierarchy or even government control.

He soon found out how the economy had an impact on social class, if you were at the top echelon of society then you owned the factory and the resources in that factory, but if you were at the bottom echelon of society then you essentially sold your labor to the owner for a wage in which you lived on. This was a shocking surprise to Marx as this was not natural at all and that this is how capitalism can be exploited to the benefit of the upper echelon of society. This means that the upper class gets to make all the choices when it comes to profit. They can lower the wages of their employees and create a larger margin for profit anytime they want. This is a good theoretical explanation as to why Marx believed that the fall of Capitalism would ultimately lead to Communism, which is what I pointed out in the first paragraph. In another analogy, Marx believed that the fall of a society would be an economic crisis or collapse, which would cause mass panic and be detrimental to the lower class. This could only be possible when the economy became too distant to each other in social class. Where the resources that were produced couldn’t be afforded by the lower class of citizens and this would cause a surplus and eventually an economic collapse. Another way for the fall of a social hierarchy would be for the citizens to revolt and demand higher pay or more prominent positions in society, this would cause a lot of problems as well. The only way for Capitalism to survive is to, “overcome challenges by remaking itself through relentless innovation” (Marks 198). I learned a lot about this in History class when we were studying the industrial revolution and how it had failed many times due to the workers refusing to work in dangerous conditions or for too low of a wage. The solutions to their problems soon came, as new laws were designed to benefit the lower class and to protect them in society so the economy wouldn’t collapse and destroy everything.

Marx impacted sociology in a way that no other philosopher had before him, especially in the 19th century. He demanded that people question their own freedom and what it meant to live in a hierarchy. He also explained the dangers of exploiting capitalism and the greed of the upper class. He had many followers who soon believed in his ideologies. Marx believed that history repeats itself, as many others do, but in a more personal way. He believed that certain patters in society will never go away unless we live in a true Communist society. These patterns include social conflict between the lower class and the upper class that I explained before. I often think of Marx as a historian and philosopher because instead of just understanding and manifesting his ideas, he looked back in our society to really grasp where we all came from and how these patterns developed. “Some scholars even reduce Marxism to historicism” (Blyukher 531). It makes perfect sense to me, especially when you think about prehistoric times when there were no social hierarchies. It was just a matter of who is going to get food today and who is going to take care of the kids. No in between and no one above them, and I assume that we can agree that those two roles are almost equal in value. However, when machines were invented and labor became the norm, Capitalism began to arise and take control of the people themselves. Then it wasn’t about who is getting food and who is taking care of the children, it turned into people generating resources for the people above them and not themselves. They instead traded their labor for wage to take care of themselves and their family.

Marx died on March 14th, 1883 in London where he later resided and worked as a philosopher. He was cursed with bad health all throughout his life, some due to his poor choices of food or leisure but others were natural. He ultimately died of pleurisy, an inflammatory condition of the lungs and thorax. However, this didn’t stop his role in modern society, as his groundwork for conflict theory and his desire for Communism is brought up whenever you want to talk about a rational change in a Capitalistic society. He is everywhere in our textbooks and for good reasons, for the most part. He makes us think and wonder what it really means to be free and what should be desired by the people. “He has been an inspiration to hundreds of millions of people who have sought revolution” (Hartman 42).

Works Cited

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