Karl Marx was a communist, and his writings influenced many in the movement. He believed the proletariat should be educated and organized and that society should be run democratically. But at first, Marx wanted to focus on economic issues, not politics. His early works were mostly about economics and philosophy. Then, after reading Hegel, Marx became interested in the theory of history. He found that Hegel had written about the need to change society through politics. Marx wrote “Grundrisse”, a critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and then a book called “Das Kapital”. These were the beginnings of Marxist thought.
Karl Marx’s political theory was based on the view that history is a cycle of social conflicts between classes. Marx believed that humanity was engaged in a continuous struggle against oppression and exploitation, driven by the desires of the ruling classes to accumulate wealth at the expense of others. His analysis of capitalism in particular led him to conclude that it was a form of slavery because the capitalists were motivated solely by greed. Capitalism creates a class of wealthy exploiters who oppress the proletariat, whose labor produces the wealth needed to sustain the capitalist economy. As a result, capitalism becomes self-defeating, because its very nature alienates the workers from their own product and therefore undermines their capacity to produce further wealth. However, he also highlighted the positive aspects of capitalism, considering it as an improvement on feudalism – yet saw capitalism as a stage in history.
