Marx, Karl

Abstract

Abstract Born in Trier, Karl Marx (1818–83), grew up in an environment saturated with the spirit of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and a republican worldview. Beginning as a left‐Hegelian, Marx's editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung , Feuerbach's critique of religion, and his early exposure to political economy led him to develop his own materialist conception of history. The key, early developments were his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right , the draft manuscripts of 1844, and the 1845 draft manuscript The German Ideology . When Marx's ideas prevailed during two international conferences in 1847, he wrote the League of the Just's new manifesto – the Manifesto of the Communist Party . Marx struggled for almost 30 years with how to present his critique of political economy, ultimately beginning with commodity as the elementary form of capitalist production – Das Kapital 's most important chapter. Despite conscious attempts to forge a single Marxist doctrine, the posthumous publication of his literary estate indicates the complexity of his ideas. Rather than being a Holy Scripture, Marx's work is best viewed as an unfinished, dynamic, unstable, dialectical whole that contains many strengths and insights but also some lacunae. The most glaring is the absence of a theory of consciousness formation.