Kaarl Marx (contd-7) - Hegellian Dialectics

Dialectic or dialectics , also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. The term was popularized by Plato's Socratic dialogues but the act itself has been central to European and Indian philosophy since antiquity.
Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions.
Different forms of dialectical reasoning have emerged throughout history from the Indosphere (Greater India) and the West (Europe). These forms include the Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, and Neo-orthodoxy..

 Hegel vs Marx

Influences on Karl Marx are generally thought to have been derived from three sources: German idealist philosophy, French socialism, and English and Scottish political economy

Immanuel Kant is believed to have had the greatest influence of any philosopher of modern times. Kantian philosophy was the basis on which the structure of Marxism was built — particularly as it was developed by Hegel. Hegel's dialectical method, which was taken up by Karl Marx, was an extension of the method of reasoning by “antinomies” that Kant used.

Hegelians were of 2 grs. 

The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Marx.[2] They were often referred to as the Young Hegelians.

While Marx accepted this broad conception of history, Hegel was an idealist, and Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialist terms. He summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Marx (and Engels) saw in Feuerbach's emphasis on people and human needs a movement toward a materialistic interpretation of society.

Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist. Feuerbach proposed that people should interpret social and political thought as their foundation and their material needs. He held that an individual is the product of their environment, that the whole consciousness of a person is the result of the interaction of sensory organs and the external world. Marx (and Engels) saw in Feuerbach's emphasis on people and human needs a movement toward a materialistic interpretation of society. [3] In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach argued that God is really a creation of man and that the qualities people attribute to God are really qualities of humanity. Accordingly, Marx argued that it is the material world that is real and that our ideas of it are consequences, not causes, of the world. Thus, like Hegel and other philosophers, Marx distinguished between appearances and reality. However he did not believe that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary, he thought that historically and socially specific ideology prevented people from seeing the material conditions of their lives clearly.

What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach was his view of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely the reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give ontological priority to what he called the "real life process" of real human beings, as he and Engels said in The German Ideology (1846):

In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking, and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.

Also, in his Theses on Feuerbach (1844), he writes that "the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point is to change it". This opposition between, firstly, various subjective interpretations given by philosophers, which may be, in a sense, compared with Weltanschauung designed to legitimize the current state of affairs, and, secondly, the effective transformation of the world through praxis, which combines theory and practice in a materialist way, is what distinguishes "Marxist philosophers" from the rest of philosophers. Indeed, Marx's break with German Idealism involves a new definition of philosophy; Louis Althusser, founder of "Structural Marxism" in the 1960s, would define it as "class struggle in theory". Marx's movement away from university philosophy and towards the workers' movement is thus inextricably linked to his rupture with his earlier writings, which pushed Marxist commentators to speak of a "young Marx" and a "mature Marx", although the nature of this cut poses problems. A year before the Revolutions of 1848, Marx and Engels thus wrote The Communist Manifesto, which was prepared to an imminent revolution, and ended with the famous cry: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!". However, Marx's thought changed again following Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's December 2, 1851 coup, which put an end to the French Second Republic and created the Second Empire which would last until the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Marx thereby modified his theory of alienation exposed in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and would latter arrive to his theory of commodity fetishism, exposed in the first chapter of the first book of Das Kapital (1867). This abandonment of the early theory of alienation would be amply discussed, several Marxist theorists, including Marxist humanists such as the Praxis School, would return to it. Others, such as Althusser, would claim that the "epistemological break" between the "young Marx" and the "mature Marx" was such that no comparisons could be done between both works, marking a shift to a "scientific theory" of society.

Karl Marx (contd-6) - Jenny

Freiherr Johann Ludwig von Westphalen (11 July 1770 – 3 March 1842) was a liberal government official, Prussian aristocrat with Scottish heritage, father of Jenny von Wrstphalen and a friend of Karl's father and  mentor, and father-in-law of Karl Marx who before leaving for Berlin who made an engagement with Jenny in 1836. 
Karl and Jenny were friends from their very childhood.In courswe of time their friendship brought them into an intimate relation that both of them decided to marry each other. 

Jenny von Westphalen was born in Salzwedel to a prominent family of the Prussian aristocracy. Her father, Ludwig von Westphalen (1770–1842), was a former widower with four previous children, who served as "Regierungsrat" in Salzwedel and in Trier. Her paternal grandfather "Edler" Christian Philip Heinrich von Westphalen (1723–1792) had been de facto "chief of staff" to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick during the Seven Years' War. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanie Wishart (1742–1811), was a Scottish noble: her father George Wishart (1703–1785) was a direct descendent of the 9th Earl of Angus and Lady Agnes Keith, the latter in turn a direct descendant of King James I, and the royal House of Stuart, while her mother's family were the Dukes of Argyll, for centuries Scotland's most powerful aristocratic family. Her mother, Amalia Julia Carolina von Westphalen (née Heubel), lived from 1780 to 1856. Jenny von Westphalen's brother Edgar von Westphalen (1819–1890), was a schoolmate and friend of Karl Marx. Another brother, Ferdinand Otto Wilhelm Henning von Westphalen, was the conservative Interior Minister of Prussia, 1850–58. Although he was one of the leading conservative forces in 19th century Prussia, Ferdinand would remain on amiable terms with Karl and Jenny Marx.

Jenny von Westphalen and Karl Heinrich Marx regularly met each other as children. She was four years older than Karl. They became close friends as teenagers. Both of them were well-read and literary, and they soon began courting. According to Marx, she was the most beautiful girl in the town of Trier. Her father, Ludwig von Westphalen, a friend of Marx's father, also befriended the teenage Marx, and would often go on walks with him, where they would discuss philosophy and English literature. Jenny was attracted to Karl for outstanding character and depth of his heart.They eventually married on June 19, 1843 in the Kreuznacher Pauluskirche (the Kreuznach church of Saint Paul), Bad Kreuznach.

In Berlin Marx came in contact with the nature and political attitude of the rule of Prussia's King and the relation of the big land lords and the poor cultivators. 

In Berlin he began his study with full vigour but could not be satisfied with the course of his study. he then began to read the basic theories and literature and earned knowledge many times greater than normal course of study in the University. In a letter he wrote to his father that it was impossible gto  progress in his studies without the knowledge of Philosophy.      

Karl Marx (contd-5)

German Ideology paved the way to German bourgeois revolution at the end of 18th century and the beginning of 19th century. The following persons took the lead in this respect.

Immanuel Kant ( 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was aGerman philosopher who is considered the central figure of modern philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our understanding, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is unknowable. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolved around the earth. 
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (

 May 19, 1762 – January 27, 1814), a German philosopher, became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings ofImmanuel Kant. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often erroneously attributed to Hegel.















                               Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was aGerman philosopher of the late Enlightenment. He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the continentaltradition of philosophy, has become increasingly influential in the analytic tradition as well. Although he remains a divisive figure, his canonical stature within Western philosophy is universally recognized.
Hegel was a lecturer in Berlin University from 1818 to 1831. He performed outstanding work in the expansion of Dialectical Methods. He explained history as the process of Dialectical processes. But his Philosophy was based on consciousness or supreme power.Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, argued that “what is rational is real and what is real is rational.” This must be understood in terms of Hegel’s further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel’s thought has been analysed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement. Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. Hegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum total of reality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end or goal. 
For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfolding dialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoes this development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history. Nature is Absolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form. Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or consciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel traced the stages of this manifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, through self-consciousness, to the advent of reason.  

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872) was a Germanphilosopher and anthropologist best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity which strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated liberalism, atheism, andmaterialism. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development ofdialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx

Karl Marx (contd-4)

 Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal

humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832, and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance.
Karl was a brilliant students. He was the best boy in his class in those subjects upto his choice. While leaving the  school education he wrote an essay , titled, " Thought of a young in selecting his profession in his future life," he wrote he wanted to sacrifice his life for the service of mankind. The education commission wrote in his school certificate that he is a genius student and showed brilliancy in old languages such as German,  etc. and  showed excellency in History, Mathematics . He is weak in French."
In 1835 he left Trier for the first time.
In October 1835 at the age of 17, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature; however, his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Karl was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that was being monitored by the police. Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner), at one point serving as club co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin.

Hegelianism and early activism: 1836–1843

Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated baroness of the Prussian ruling class who had known Marx since childhood. Having broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial due to the differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father, a liberal aristocrat, Ludwig von Westphalen, and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, Marx married Jenny in a Protestant church in Kreuznach.

Karl Marx (1818–1883), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), và các con gái của Marx: Jenny Caroline (1844–1883), Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898), and Jenny Laura (1845–1911)

In October 1836 Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty of law and renting a room in the Mittelstrasse. Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy, and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club (Doktorklub), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837; they gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions, but adopted his dialectical method in order to criticise established society, politics, and religion from a leftist perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father, and treasured his memory after his death.

Karl Marx (contd-3)

The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution or Trois Glorieuses in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, theBourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, theHouse of Orléans; and the replacement of the principle of hereditary right by popular sovereignty.

Lyon Rebellions of 1831 and 1834

the first independent armed actions of the French proletariat, provoked by the difficult position of the workers and minor artisans employed inthe silk-weaving industry in the city of Lyon.

The 1831 uprising began on November 21 in connection with the refusal of the manufacturers to accept the new, higher rates for the weavingworkers that had been agreed upon by a combined commission of owners and weavers. The rebels’ slogan was “Live working, or die fighting!”On November 23 the government troops, which had been routed in battle, were forced to abandon the city; however, stronger military unitsentered Lyon on December 1–3 and suppressed the uprising.

The cause of the uprising of 1834 (which began on April 9) was the ratification by the Chamber of Deputies of a bill prohibiting workers’associations and the subsequent reprisals of the authorities against the participants in a strike in Lyon in February 1834. 

In Germany there were social and economic uprising.

Karl Marx (contd-2)

Karl Heinrich Marx was one of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx in Trier, Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer who revered Kant and Voltaire, and was a passionate activist for Prussian reform. Although both parents were Jewish with rabbinical ancestry, Karl’s father converted to Christianity in 1816 at the age of 35.This was likely a professional concession in response to an 1815 law banning Jews from high society. He was baptized a Lutheran, rather than a Catholic, which was the predominant faith in Trier, because he “equated Protestantism with intellectual freedom.” When he was 6, Karl was baptized along with the other children, but his mother waited until 1825, after her father died.

Karl had deep respect to his father. He wrote in a letter , " I was born of a father having legal profession , Lawyer, who was an elected  leader for a good number of years and was having outstanding personality in all respect." 

In his childhood Karl was very joyful. He was the most lively person among all his friends and sisters.He had the capacity of telling beautiful stories constructed by his own.

Marx was an average student. He was educated at home until he was 12 and spent five years, from 1830 to 1835, at the Jesuit high school in Trier, at that time known as the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium. The school’s principal, a friend of Marx’s father, was a liberal and a Kantian and was respected by the people of Rhineland but suspect to authorities. The school was under surveillance and was raided in 1832.

Immanuel Kant ( 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was aGerman philosopher who is considered the central figure of modern philosophy.

 Hugo Wyttenbach, the Headmaster of the Gymnasium,

was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832, and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance.

Karl Marx (contd-1)

Origins of Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism

The late 19^th century was a critical time of change: social, economical, political, and more. This change resulted from the revolutions of the previous centuries. Three such revolutions in particular are the French Revolution, Scientific Revolution, and the Christian Reformation. The culmination of these three revolutions gave birth to new political, social, and economical ideologies of Capitalism, Socialism- governmental and non-governmental, and Communism/Anarchism. Each ideology broke bonds with the old monarchial and feudal systems; however each has a very different view on the appropriate way to do so. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies. It became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and secularism, among many others. In 1790s the

 Execution of Louis XVI in what is now the Place de la Concorde, facing the empty pedestal where the statue of his grandfather, Louis XV, had stood. 

Abolition of feudalism

Main article: Abolition of feudalism in France

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789

On the night of 4 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism (sufficient peasant revolts had almost already ended feudalism) in the August Decrees, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes (a 10% tax for the Church) gathered by the First Estate. During a few hours nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies and cities lost their special 

privileges.

Germany developed its factories in this area and two classes were born Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. Even at the end of eighteenth cntury the Prussian Govt. did not dare to abolish the benefits earned by this revolution in Rhine.

Trier was established by Roman empire.

Karl was brought up in this city which was not only rich in its  past heriatge but also there were wretched artisans creating a huge contradiction between the two classes.