Karl Marx
The influence of Karl Marx's thought on the events transpiringsubsequent to his writings is so immense that it perhaps towers over anyother theorist of his time or era. Perhaps the only 19th century thinkerswhose ideas can be said to have had a similar wide-based appeal anddissemination might be Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin-but although thosegreat thinkers have established much in their given fields, certainly Marxhas more deeply affected the world community and global politics on amassive scale. Without Marx there would not be any idea of socialism orcommunism as we know it, and the revolutions of 1848, the Russianrevolution, the ascendancy of Mao Tse Tung in China, and the Cold War,might all have never occurred or have been significantly differently. Partof the pervasiveness of Marx's idea is that it is applicable to severalwidely different arenas of study and crosses the gaps between many ofthese disciplines. For example, Marx's idea of the dialectic, of course,derives from Hegelian philosophy, although Marx uses a radical materialistbasis for his dialectic that has more philosophical resonance withFeuerbach. Despite being philosophical at its root, Marx's philosophy is
Weil rejected Marxism and moved insteadtoward a religious idealism that considered God as an end rather than man. Similarly, whilethere is a heavy political bent to all of Marx, his philosophical claimsare predicated on an allegedly systematic analysis of history. Thus, while Marxism was ahugely important development in world history, neither was it one thatappears to have achieved its goal of offering an "objective" version ofhistory. His success was thus linkedlargely to his populism and his simply message that ignored the greaterideological component of Marxist thought. views the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat the principal class struggle which will be decisive for the historical future of modern society. minently practical and thus it bridges the gap between speculativephilosophy and a practical, political ethos. These groups are classes potentially, and become so through social consciousness and a political movement representing the class's objective interest in achieving and maintaining a set of production relations in which the class is dominant. Indeed, Debs true skill was as apopulist, who focused on the humanistic benefits of socialist ideas ratherthan the complex philosophical constructs of dialectal materialism: For Debs, Socialism was as much about the dignity and humanity of the individual worker as it was about abstract questions of the proper organization of the American means of production or the distribution of wealth. Butit would, of course, be similarly unfair to limit Marx's wide appeal to thefact that he simply integrated a number of previously discrete fields ofstudy in creating his systematic materialist philosophy of history. This placed much of Debs' rhetoric firmly within an American as well as a European political context; Debs spoke in the optimistic, evangelical cadences of a home-grown American radical tradition, drawing on Emerson, Robert Owen, or John Brown as much as on Marx or Engels. Marx saw history, not as aseries of random events, clashes between nations, or struggles for poweramong the elite and the aristocracy. Another important early Marxist activist and philosopher was SimoneWeil, who was a Marxist early in her life and later rejected socialismafter witnessing first-hand the hypocrisy and inefficiency that can bepart of the socialist system.
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Acceptance Essays
