History Creator / KarlMarx

He has no relations to Creator/TheMarxBrothers, or the final boss from ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar''. Not to be confused with Creator/KarlMay, another German Karl M of the 19th century who wrote books that sold by the millions, ''or'' with comic book artist Creator/CarlBarks. The trope KarlMarxHatesYourGuts is named after him. Also, yes, he kinda does look quite like a grumpy version of SantaClaus, naturally inviting facetious comparisons between his prescriptions for allocating resources and Santa's giving of gifts.

* ''Miss Marx'' (2020 film), abouthis daughter Eleanor. Portrayed by Philip Gröning.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny:[[invoked]] Though many people today think of him as a dangerously misguided person, the modern understanding of social science and economics -- both liberal and conservative -- owes an enormous debt to him and his theories. Similarly, his critiques of capitalism and advocacy of communism can seem less applicable in the modern world (not that he is no longer relevant). However, at the time he was writing, the conditions for the working class, especially in England (where he wrote ''Das Kapital''), were truly appalling, and many of the ideas and movements that would improve and reform it -- and, ironically, blunt so much of communism's appeal -- were still considered seditious. A year before he began his studies at the University of Bonn, England transported several Dorsetshire men to UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} for forming a union. Ultimately, what Marx didn't anticipate was the dynamism of democracy and capitalism to effect change. Remember, Marx was writing during a time when none of the following existed: minimum wages, worker protections, welfare systems, laws against child labor, laws against trusts or monopolies, laws demanding truthful advertising, laws banning unsafe products, laws guaranteeing rights to women and minorities (nor, in many cases, to Europeans and men), and, for most of the world, voting rights for most people. We have come a ''long'' way since Marx's time, and in some ways he is VindicatedByHistory.

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker writer, economist, and sociologist]], very polarizing to this day, who is known best for writing about, theorizing and advocating [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialism and communism]]. His best known and proverbial works are ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848), a short pamphlet co-written with Friedrich Engels, in response to [[UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848 a series of revolutions across Europe that year]] and the {{Doorstopper}} that is ''Capital''. Both works are bywords for UsefulNotes/{{socialism}} and communism, but neither was the first work about socialism -- it was already a common word by the time it was published, and socialist thought was grounded in some of the more left-wing thinkers of UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment (which Marx cited as his main influence).

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker writer]], very polarizing to this day, who is known best for writing about, theorizing and advocating [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialism and communism]]. His best known and proverbial works are ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848), a short pamphlet co-written with Friedrich Engels, in response to [[UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848 a series of revolutions across Europe that year]] and the {{Doorstopper}} that is ''Capital''. Both works are bywords for UsefulNotes/{{socialism}} and communism, but neither was the first work about socialism -- it was already a common word by the time it was published, and socialist thought was grounded in some of the more left-wing thinkers of UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment (which Marx cited as his main influence).

* ''1871'' (1990 film), Portrayed by Creator/MedHondo (a case of RaceLift).

!!Notable works by Marx include:

Many of his writings are in the public domain and any interested person can read them at [[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/date/index.htm Marxists Internet Archive]].

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!!Karl Marx and his works provide examples of:

He has no relations to Creator/TheMarxBrothers, or the final boss from ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar''. Not to be confused with Creator/KarlMay, another German Karl M of the 19th century who wrote books that sold by the millions and ''also'' with comic book artist Creator/CarlBarks. The trope KarlMarxHatesYourGuts is named after him. Also, yes, he kinda does look quite like a grumpy version of SantaClaus, naturally inviting facetious comparisons between his prescriptions for allocating resources and Santa's giving of gifts.

* ''The Holy Book'' (1844): A damning critique of a then-popular group of philosophers known as the Young Hegelians.

* ''The Civil War in France'' (1871): Notable for being an examination of the infamous Paris Commune of 1871, the most significant socialist revolution within his own lifetime.

** Marx's main idea was that the communist revolution would take place in developed nations like Britain, UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands, and the United States: nations with advanced technology, liberal democratic government, and a well-educated working class who are intelligent enough to understand what is wrong with capitalist society. Indeed, Leninism modified and differed with Marxism ''on this very point'' and Lenin had to justify why a poor feudal totalitarian backwater like Russia, where massive majorities of people couldn't read or write, would set up a Communist utopia. Marx noted that his ideas were popular in Russia towards the end of his life and wondered if revolution could take root there, but he was highly cautious and skeptical (retroactively, one could say, ProperlyParanoid) about it.

* GoodRepublicEvilEmpire: He certainly believed that democracies and republics, where people have at least some say in how the government runs the country, were better than countries run by monarchs, which are oppressive by their nature. He thought that it would lead to the majority having more power -- as he put it, "Democracy is the road to socialism." However, he also thought that DemocracyIsFlawed, because the rich will corrupt the system and manipulate it for their benefit, and that eventually a more sophisticated form of democracy would have to take shape.[[note]]In Marx's life, where women didn't have the vote, universal suffrage was far away, minorities were oppressed, colonialism was legitimately acceptable to liberals like John Stuart Mill, workers had little to no legal protections, organized religion controlled most of the available education and influenced the state, the contemporary idea of democracy didn't really exist, and it only came in the 20th century and one could argue that the revolutions and movements inspired by Marx drove modern governments on the path to reform themselves towards the current idea of democracy, especially since each reform, even if proposed by liberals, social democrats, or even conservatives, would be labelled "communist" until proven otherwise.[[/note]]

** Marx believed in a society run by the "proletariat," which he defined as being strictly the industrial working class or those who have been displaced from such a job. This specifically excluded the agricultural "peasant" class, which Marx didn't think would be too enthusiastic about a revolution. He did think such a society would take care of the agricultural peasant class by necessity and [[RousseauWasRight out of goodwill]]. In practice, though, most "communist" states would end up forcefully starving the agricultural class by "collectivizing" food to either feed the industrial class or buy industrial equipment with on the international market.

** And [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of]] ''[[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Eighteenth Brumaire]]''.

* InsistentTerminology: There are Marxists who believe that other (so-called) Marxists, such as UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin, UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, UsefulNotes/MaoZedong, UsefulNotes/FidelCastro, and UsefulNotes/CheGuevara, were [[NoTrueScotsman not really Marxists]] but statist oligarchs who abused the word of Marx to gain quasi-religious power. It's pretty much a FlameBait subject. It's accurate in that Marx himself certainly didn't call his own ideas Marxist and so would make references to complex ideas assuming his readership was familiar with it. The other thing is that before the October Revolution, not all his works were published, and only after the USSR came in were his earlier works (called "Young Marx" by academics) unearthed, showing a more humanistic and analytical side than his later works did. People's views of him, then, began to change as his older works were published. The Soviets, for their part, could hardly be blamed for not reading all his books since they went by what was published.

* TheNeedsOfTheMany: A ''huge'' advocate for this trope, noting that the majority of the people were working poor laborers at that time, he argues that the massive wealth and the goods from the wealthy class (capitalists) should be redistributed among the working class majority. Ironically, he's highly critical of [[ForHappiness utilitarianism]] too (at least Jeremy Bentham's version of it), stating that human nature is too dynamic to be limited to a ''single'' utility and noted that Bentham fails to take into account the changing character of people. Instead, most of his communist ethical views were closer to Immanuel Kant and deontology.

** Engels saw the Terror as "useless cruelties" perpetrated by deeply paranoid people, and Marx likewise called UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre a "terrorist with his [[CloudCuckoolander head in the clouds]]", but they also regarded Thermidor as a major reversal of the Revolution's progressive policies and saw the Jacobin Republic and its government as providing true democratic mobilization to France.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: He heavily implied, if not outright stated, that this would happen at least in nations like Germany, Russia, and other parts of Europe without consistent liberal institutions and infrastructure. But to him, this would count as NecessarilyEvil since a world without revolution, which featured mass poverty, illiteracy, imperialism, UrbanSegregation, and oppression of minorities, was far less civilized than the worst revolutionary excess.

** In university curricula and textbooks, Marx and his economic theories appear only as a footnote, if at all. While he's still a very relevant figure for sociologists and philosophers, none of Marx's contributions to economics is generally accepted today as scientifically credible. For example, Marx asserted that the "value"[[note]]Despite "value" being a central concept to Marx's arguments, he never provided a definition for it.[[/note]] of an asset is equal to -- using the words of Adam Smith -- the "toil and trouble" necessary to acquire it, and this "toil and trouble" is ultimately labor and labor alone. This led Marx to his most fundamental criticism of capitalism: that all production of wealth from sources other than labor (including the employment relationship, all rent, all interest, and all investments) can objectively, scientifically, and inherently only exist by stealing "value" from the fruit of labor, and must be obliterated in a just society. During Marx's lifetime, this could be accepted based on known evidence, but mainstream modern economics rejects the Labor Theory of Value and Marx's accompanying conclusions as incorrect for two reasons. Firstly, it is ''not'' true that the value[[note]]Value here is defined as the importance of an asset to a person or group of people's economic condition.[[/note]] of assets is equal to the "toil and trouble" of acquiring them. Secondly, this "toil and trouble" of production necessarily involves factors that cannot be reduced to labor -- namely, the time required for production between the starting resources and the finished product, and the scarcity and utility of natural resources.
** This isn't even getting into scientific ideas that Marx based his ideas on but have now been thoroughly debunked. For example, much of the theory of "late-stage capitalism" hinges on the the idea of Malthusian population growth, just without T.R. Malthus's [[KillThePoor callous solution to the problem]]. Marx thought that as the economy became more efficient under capitalism, increasing numbers of people would be put out of a job (which is an assumption that has problems of its own, but this was less well understood at the time) while the population continued to rise exponentially. Thus, the bargaining power of labor would be obliterated and a fundamentally new form of economy would be needed to distribute goods to meet these people's basic needs. However, it turns out the population explosion in Marx's time was the irregularity rather than the norm. The rate of population growth began to progress more logarithmically than exponentially in the 20th century and global population decline is a very real possibility before the 22nd century. This means that labor is itself an increasingly scarce resource, giving labor (or, to use Marxist terminology, holders of labor power) more power to negotiate wages and benefits.

** Despite being an immigrant to England, he was wary of immigration by working-class Irish, since he considered it a tool by the English ruling classes to pit the English and Irish working classes against each other.

* YouCannotKillAnIdea: Thoroughly {{averted|Trope}}. According to Marx's materialist conception of history, people in social classes create ideas spontaneously as an attempt at social cohesion or outright control of the economic system. Ideas only live while they're useful to one of the social classes (either the ruling class or the working class) who professes a belief in them. Once ideas cease to have utility, they're discarded and fade into nonexistence or they mutate into a form that supports the new economic conditions. Ironically, Marxism itself has succumbed to this due to the events of the 20th century; however, Marx himself considered the materialist conception of history a set of research principles and was rather hostile to "ideology" as he defined it.
* {{Zeerust}}: Marx was largely motivated by his belief that machines would soon make the working class obsolete. Communism, as Marx defined it, sought to make these machines benefit the working class instead. He believed that factories capable of producing huge amounts of goods near-autonomously were just over the horizon, which if seized by the proletariat, could essentially afford everyone a OneHourWorkWeek. Fast forward 150+ years and humans have only now approached being able to do such a thing.[[note]]Maybe while 3D printing and advances in artificial intelligence seem promising, keep in mind a vocal minority of experts have constantly predicted that the PostScarcityEconomy is just around the corner for over a hundred years.[[/note]] While Marx was right about the rise of machines, he did not predict the amount of maintenance, monitoring, and assistance those machines would require machines literally capable of thinking to get anywhere close.
** Marx argued that a communist revolution would most likely succeed in the wealthiest, most industrialized parts of the world, where existing industry could be used to create a PostScarcityEconomy the fastest. However, Lenin and virtually all "Communist" states afterwards argued the opposite; that a successful communist revolution could only succeed in the poorest and least industrialized countries and regions. Where this ties into zeerust is the advancement in weaponry between Marx's time and the golden age of communism. Marx died before the invention of smokeless gunpowder and the standardization of the repeating rifle, much less machine guns, tanks, and airplanes. Marxist-Leninists would argue that it was now entirely possible for a well-equipped group of elites to suppress a popular revolution. And even if one did somehow succeed, World War I made it clear that such a civil war would likely destroy a [[PyrrhicVictory nation's industrial capacity completely]].