Hello everyone, here is a small broadcast reading, next, I will use a series of videos to introduce the famous historical materialist philosopher of the 19th century, one of the founders of Marxism: the philosophical thought of Karl Marx.
Speaking of Marx, there may be no one who has not heard, in the textbooks of middle schools and universities, Marxist principles have special course introductions, the content of the textbooks is mainly from the political economy part, here will not be repeated, this part of the content is slightly sensitive. To put it simply, Marxist thought is the mainstream ideology of socialist countries, and Marxist thought has a very great impact on China's political, economic and social development. For example, the slogans that we are familiar with, "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth", "No matter whether the black cat is a white cat, if you can catch a mouse, you are a good cat", "Crossing the river by feeling the stones", "Development is the last word" and so on.
Today's society generally attaches importance to practical experience and emphasizes the spirit of hard work, which is the far-reaching influence of Chinese culture on the one hand, and the profound influence of Marx's materialist thought on the other hand. Practice is one of the core keywords of Marxism, Marx said in the book "Theses on Feuerbach": "Philosophers only explain the world in different ways, and the problem is to change the world", and changing the world depends on practice. Before comprehensively introducing Marx's philosophical thought, we will introduce Marx's life as usual.
Born in 1818 in Trier, Germany, Karl Marx came to a relatively wealthy middle-class family, his father was Jewish and a successful lawyer, and his father was very fond of the ideas of Western Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire, Rousseau and others. Therefore, Marx was deeply influenced by liberalism and the Enlightenment from an early age. In 1830, Marx attended the Trier Secondary School, and in 1835 entered the University of Bonn to study law, and his father wanted to train him to become a lawyer, but during the university years, Marx was rebellious, often drinking and fighting, and was later transferred by his father to the University of Berlin.
When Marx went to the University of Berlin, Hegel had just died a few years ago, Hegel was a professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, after Hegel's death, the academic atmosphere of the University of Berlin was also very strong, such as the "young Hegelians" and "old Hegelians", the young Hegelians were more radical, Marx joined the Young Hegelians during his time at the University of Berlin, Marx spent a lot of time studying philosophy and history, during which Marx was very obsessed with Bruno Powell's philosophy classes. It can even be said that without Powell there would be no Marx.
Powell was a very famous German philosopher, also a believer in Hegel's philosophy, was one of the representatives of the young Hegelian school, Powell was also for publishing some anti-religious ideological works, and was later dismissed by the university, but his ideas influenced the early Marx, Marx's doctoral dissertation put forward the position that philosophy is higher than theology, and later rejected, in 1841, Marx received a doctorate in philosophy with an article entitled "The Difference between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and the Natural Philosophy of Epicurus".
After graduation, Marx became the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, and worked until he was the editor-in-chief, but because Marx published an article in the newspaper criticizing the Russian Tsar, which caused dissatisfaction among the Russian Tsars, the King of Prussia, after receiving protests from the Tsar, revoked the circulation permission of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1843, so Marx also lost his job, but during this time Marx met his lifelong partner Engels.
In 1845, he and Engels co-authored the book German Ideology, which became Marx's first philosophical work in the true sense. In this book, they expounded for the first time the basic principles of historical materialism, such as social existence determines social consciousness, the mode of production plays a decisive role in social life, etc., and this book also marks the maturity of Marxist philosophy. At the same time, in this book, they also criticize Hegel's dialectics and Feuerbach's old materialist philosophy, and clearly put forward the historical task of the proletariat's seizure of power, laying the initial theoretical foundation for socialism from utopian science.
In 1847, Marx and Engels were invited to join the League of the Righteous. In June 1847, the League was renamed the Communist League, and in February 1848, Marx and Engels drafted the program of the League, which is famous: The Communist Manifesto, which also marked the birth of Marxism. In 1848, the European Revolution broke out, a struggle between the commoners and the nobility, an armed revolution between the Commoners and liberal scholars in Europe against the monarchical dictatorship, which spread almost to the whole of Europe and was the largest revolutionary movement in The history of Europe. Marx was expelled by the Belgian authorities. At the invitation of the new Provisional Government of France, Marx and Engels returned to Paris, France.
After the outbreak of the European revolution, Marx was forced into exile due to the expulsion of various governments, and the Marx and his wife were therefore in a long period of displacement and extreme poverty, in these years, Marx did not have a fixed job, and the family's economic resources mainly relied on meager income from manuscript fees. Because, without financial resources, Marx was plagued by hunger and survival problems for a long time, not only was he plagued by hunger and disease, but also mentally devastated, and 3 of his four children died one after another. Fortunately, during this period, Engels gave great help, often funding Marx's living expenses, and in this extremely difficult situation, Marx still wrote his most important work, Capital, and Lenin later said: "If it were not for Engels sacrificing himself and constantly giving support, Marx would not only not be able to write Capital, but would also die of poverty." This also laid the foundation for the revolutionary friendship between Marx and Engels, which was later passed down as a good story.
On September 28, 1864, Marx attended the Inaugural Congress of the First International and was elected to the Leading Council. On 14 September 1867, the first volume of Capital was published. The last two volumes were compiled and published by Engels after Marx's death. Capital is a huge work of political economy, in which Marx took the materialist view of history as the basic idea as the guide and surplus value as the center, made a thorough critique of capitalism, expounded the basic theory of capitalist commodity production, circulation and distribution, and revealed the objective law of economic development, which has epoch-making historical significance.
In March 1883, a generation of great thinkers Marx died in his Paris apartment, and Engels presided over the funeral, which only about 20 people attended.
Well, today Marx's life will be briefly introduced here, the next article, we will begin to formally introduce the philosophical thought of Marx, Marx is a philosopher of historical materialism, but strangely, he has hardly explicitly put forward the concept of "historical materialism", why is this? Let's talk about the next article, if you like my article, please pay attention to the small broadcast reading, we will see you in the next article.