Revolutionary Thinker: Over Two Centuries of Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on the 5th of May, 1818, in Trier, Prussia. He was the son of a successful Jewish lawyer who had converted to Lutheranism. Aged seventeen, he went to the University of Bonn to study philosophy and literature. While there, he was put in prison for drunkenness + drunkenness: ubriachezza  and fought a duel + fought a duel: aver combattuto a duello . Desperate, his father sent him to Berlin to study law. In the same year, he became engaged to + became engaged to: si fidanzò con  Jenny von Westphalen, a member of the Prussian ruling class + ruling class: classe dirigente . After university, he started working for radical newspapers, first in Cologne and then in Paris. He then married Jenny and later became a revolutionary communist. In Paris he met the German radical philosopher Friedrich Engels, who would become his best friend. The 1840s were a time of social and political unrest + unrest: agitazioni, disordini  in Europe, and Marx had problems with conservative authorities, forcing him to move + forcing him to move: che lo constrinsero a spostarsi  from country to country.

Communist Manifesto

In February 1848, Marx and Engels published what would become + what would become: quello che sarebbe diventato  one of the most important political documents in modern history. The Manifesto of the Communist Party predicted that capitalism had internal tensions which would cause its self-destruction. A classless, communist society would replace capitalism when the working class took political power. + SPEAK UP EXPLAINS A classless, communist society would replace capitalism when the working class took political power "Una società comunista senza classi avrebbe sostituito il capitalismo quando la classe operaia avesse preso il potere". Stedman Jones usa would più il verbo al passato (took) per formare il secondo condizionale, ovvero quello che indica un’ipotesi che, contrariamente a quanto previsto da Marx, non si è ancora verificata: la fase definitiva e finale del ciclo di vita del capitalismo. Republican revolts against monarchies were now occurring all over Europe, and Marx took refuge + took refuge: si rifugiò  from angry conservative authorities in London. 

Terrible Poverty

Marx and his wife spent many years living in terrible poverty. Jenny often visited pawnbrokers + pawnbrokers: banchi dei pegni , and Marx even borrowed money from his baker + borrowed money from his baker: prendeva in prestito denaro dal suo panettiere . Engels, who lived in Manchester where his father owned a prosperous textile factory, helped them with money. Marx and his wife would have seven children, but only three of them, Jenny, Laura and Eleanor, survived to adulthood + survived through adulthood: sono sopravvissuti fino all’età adulta . Marx used pseudonyms when renting houses or flats, to avoid problems with the authorities. He and Engels began writing economic articles for foreign newspapers. During these years, Marx continued his study of capitalism and political economics, using the famous reading room of the British Museum. 

Das Kapital

In 1867, he published Das Kapital (Capital), his most detailed explanation of his economic theory. Capital, also known as the ‘Bible of the working class’, is now one of the most studied books in the world. For years, Marx combined journalism with research and political writing, but his health was always bad. He suffered from headaches, eye inflammations, neuralgia, rheumatic pains and boils + rheumatic pains and boils: dolori reumatici e foruncoli . His habits did not help. He liked highly-seasoned food + highly-seasoned food: alimenti altamente stagionati , wine, liqueurs and cigars. Jenny died in December 1881. Heartbroken, Marx developed catarrh and then bronchitis and pleurisy + developed catarrh and then bronchitis and pleurisy: prese un raffreddore che poi divenne bronchite e pleurite . He died on the 14th of March, 1883. 

Marx’s Legacy

Karl Marx is one of the most influential figures in history. Capital changed the course of the modern world. For much of the 20th century, one third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes influenced by Marx’s thoughts. And now, two hundred years after his birth, he is attracting interest once again. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, years of austerity and low wages, and growing economic injustice – the world’s richest one per cent are now richer than the rest of the global population – mean that many people, especially young people, are turning to Marx once again + turning to Marx once again: tornano di nuovo a Marx .

DYNAMISM AND DESTRUCTION

Gareth Stedman Jones is Professor of the history of ideas at Queen Mary, University of London. He is also a world authority on Karl Marx and his ideas. In a book presentation in London, Stedman Jones talked about his authoritative + authoritative: autorevole  biography of the German economist and thinker, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. He began by saying that he wrote the book not simply to praise + praise: elogiare  Marx but to put the man and his ideas into context. 

Gareth Stedman Jones (English accent): I wanted to warn + warn: avvertire  people that this wasn’t going to be yet another exercise in great man history or great man ideas. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to, as it were, do a hatchet job on Marx + SPEAK UP EXPLAINS "Non volevo fare, per così dire, una carneficina (una dura critica) a Marx". A hatchet è una sorta di piccola “ascia”, e l’espressione hatchet job si usa nell’ambiente della critica giornalistica o, come in questo caso, in un saggio biografico, per riferirsi a quei testi che distruggono completamente l’oggetto della sua analisi. Nel Regno Unito è praticamente diventato un genere letterario a se stante in cui viene mostrato il caratteristico sarcasmo britannico. , either. So, what I wanted to do is to show that he did, indeed, produce some truly important ideas, ideas which we still use, not just Marxists, but anyone who wants to think about modern capitalism. And you can still find a form of thinking about it which captures it, really. I mean, its energy, its restlessness + restlessness: agitazione, irrequietezza . I think he put it best + he put it best: quello che espresse meglio di tutti , the sense of the dynamism, the end of this forward movement, the way in which it removes traditional hierarchies, undercuts old ideas + it removes traditional .... old ideas: rimosse le gerarchie tradizionali e invalidò le vecchie idee . It’s a very destructive force. But it’s also – as Marx himself said in the Communist Manifesto – capitalism produced more in a hundred years than had been produced in the hundred thousand years before it. And, in this sense it has produced a new world. And that, I think, he said it more powerfully than anybody else.

 A GODLESS RELIGION

One of Marx’s key concepts is what he called ‘the fetishism of commodities + SPEAK UP EXPLAINS The fetishism of commodities "Il feticismo delle merci". Nelle teorie di Marx, il concetto di feticismo delle merci serviva a spiegare il rapporto tossico che si sviluppa - come consumatori ma anche come lavoratori - con gli oggetti prodotti dalla macchina capitalista. Immersi in questa catena di produzione, gli oggetti acquisiscono proprietà esoteriche che influenzano il nostro comportamento e, tra gli altri fattori, ci portano a uno stato psicologico che Marx analizzò in profondità: l’alienazione. ’. To explain this, Stedman Jones compares capitalism to religion:

Gareth Stedman Jones: What capitalism does is to – in a similar way to what religion does – it suggests to human beings that the agency is impersonal. That it’s not their doing + it’s not their doing: non dipende da loro , it’s something else that is dominating them. And so that’s what Marx later refers to as the ‘fetishism of commodities’. It’s the idea that it’s somehow forces from outside which are forcing people to do things. When in fact it’s they themselves which [who] have created those conditions rather than nature.

NOT A SCIENTIST

Yet despite the comparison made by his friend Friedrich wide of the mark + wide of the mark: sono inesatte (lett. non colpiscono il bersaglio) Engels, Marx was no Charles Darwin + Marx was no Darwin: Marx era al livello di Darwin , says Stedman Jones. Marx himself never claimed that capitalism contained ‘natural laws’ that ensured it would evolve in a certain way:

Gareth Stedman Jones: He’s not at all a good day-to-day observer of things, and his views about working-class movements, whether it’s Germany, France or Britain, on the whole are always . And in terms of his theory, what Engels tried to do was to say, ‘Well, Marx went together with Darwin + Marx went together with Darwin: Marx estaba a la altura de Darwin , really’. He says that at Marx’s funeral. That Marx transformed the law of history just as Darwin transformed the laws of nature. All this is not true. What Marx belongs to + belongs to: apparteneva  is a previous generation, the Romanticism, in which, suddenly, as opposed to 18th century mechanical thought, you’ve got the idea of the organism. People get very excited around 1780-1830 about organic development. What is an organism? It means that it has a birth, a growing up, a coming to maturity, decline, death. And that’s in a way the initial model he has of what is going to happen to the capitalist mode of production. But as his work goes on, although he never admits anytime his life that he’s ever wrong about anything, but I think what he comes to see is that that’s not happening. That capitalism isn’t… whatever it is, it isn’t quite the organism that has been thought about.