Marxism

Theoretical Sources

Marx developed his eponymous theoretical system from three major sources: German philosophy, French politics, and English economics. Marx showed great interest in law and philosophy in his early works; his later works were more concerned with political economy and political strategy.

The German philosophy on which Marx drew was primarily that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel but also included the Young Hegelians and Ludwig Feuerbach's materialism. During his student days at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, Marx studied history and philosophy, took a strong interest in the works of the philosopher Hegel, and joined a student–professor group called the Young Hegelians. Many of Marx's basic ideas, such as his critique of civil society and private property, emerged when he was writing Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. He asserts that religion is the “opium of the people” and calls for an “uprising of the proletariat” to realize the conceptions of philosophy, a point also made in Theses on Feuerbach (1845). Marx had been strongly influenced by Hegel's Logic and dialectical method, and his great work Capital is imbued with intellectual categories derived from Hegel.

French politics and socialist movements played an important role in shaping Marx's thoughts. Marx's father-in-law, Baron von Westphalen, and his teachers were all strongly influenced by the French Enlightenment. Marx was also strongly influenced by the French Revolution and by French thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After he emigrated to Paris together with his wife to escape [Page 1496]political persecution by German authorities, Marx became acquainted with French socialist thinkers and began to witness the living conditions of people in poverty by socializing with working-class people. French socialism enabled Marx to break with Hegel's teleological approach to history, to develop a broad-ranging social economy, to understand the social and personal impact of modern industry, and to grasp the significance of socialism. After studying the development of Bonapartism and commenting on the nature and significance of the Paris Commune, Marx completed several political works (Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire) and expounded his major political ideas about the state and revolution.

The third major source of Marx's theory was English economics, exemplified by writers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus. It was during his years in Paris that Marx began his study of English economics; from the early 1840s, he made an increasingly detailed study of the works of English economists. After moving to London, Marx undertook deep and systematic research on the development of the capitalist mode of production in England. In writing the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx relied extensively on the work of Adam Smith, especially his views on the division of labor, rent, subsistence wages, and the three stages of society. Once he became acquainted with Ricardo's work, Principles of Political Economy, Marx abandoned the economic theory developed in the 1844 Manuscripts. His critique of The Poverty of Philosophy was Ricardian in character. By absorbing the ideas in the works of classic political economists and analyzing the capitalist development in England, Marx established his own status as a political economist.

...