In 1999, professors from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom initiated an on-campus consultation and selection on "who is the first thinker of the second millennium of the Human Age". The result of the vote was: Marx first, Einstein second. Subsequently, the BBC publicly consulted on the global Internet with the same issue. A month down. Combining global voting results, Marx is still first, Einstein is second, Newton and Darwin are third and fourth, respectively. Why did Marx rank ahead of many great giants and be called the first thinker of the millennium?
Marx
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to a family of lawyers in the city of Tellier. After graduating from secondary school, Marx first entered the University of Bonn and then transferred to the University of Berlin. He read a wide range of books and earned his Ph.D. After graduation, he wrote for the Rheinische Zeitung and became its editor, defending the interests of the poor peasants in the newspaper against authoritarian oppression.
In 1845, Marx participated in the preparation of the Forward Weekly, in which he made a sharp critique of German absolutism. The Prussian government was very dissatisfied with this and demanded that the French government expel Marx, who was forced to flee from France to Belgium.
In 1848, the bourgeois-democratic revolution on the European continent broke out, and Marx and Engels guided the league into the revolutionary torrent. In early March, Marx was expelled from Brussels by the Belgian government and arrived in Paris. In May 1849, Marx received an expulsion order from the Prussian authorities.
In September 1849, Marx was expelled by the French government and went to London, England, where Marx spent his life.
Marx, who suffered four expulsions in his lifetime, could have had a comfortable and comfortable life, but he chose a revolutionary road full of thorns and bumps.
In the process of expulsion, Marx accumulated very profound knowledge and published many theories. Invited by the international workers' organization League of the Righteous, Marx reorganized it into the Communist League, and together with Engels drafted the programme of the world's first proletarian party, the Communist Manifesto. In February 1848, the Publication of the Communist Manifesto marked the birth of Marxism. Later, when the European revolution broke out, Marx led the Communist League into this bourgeois revolution, providing theoretical guidance and tactics for the proletariat in this bourgeois revolution. Although the revolution later failed, Marx enriched the theory of the proletarian revolution from the experience of the revolution.
Communist Manifesto
Later, in 1867, Marx published the first volume of Capital, which was the most important work of Marx's life and the longest work of Marx. Until Marx's death, the second and third volumes of Capital were not published. In Capital, Marx put forward his core theory, the theory of surplus value. Through a detailed analysis of the origin and essence of surplus value, the production and distribution or transformation of surplus value, Marx discovered the essence of capitalist economic operation, unveiled the secret of the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, elucidated the law of movement of the occurrence, development and demise of capitalism, and pointed out the historical mission of the proletariat - to overthrow the capitalist system.
A french edition of Das Kapital
As Engels pointed out: "Marx was first and foremost a revolutionary. The real mission of his life is to take part in one way or another in the cause of overthrowing capitalist society and the state apparatus it has established, in the cause of the emancipation of the modern proletariat, and it is precisely the first time that he has made the modern proletariat aware of its own position and needs, of the conditions of its own emancipation. Struggle is an essential element of his life, and few people fight with enthusiasm, tenacity and effectiveness as he does.
Let us always remember the most famous aphorism engraved on Marx's tombstone: "Philosophers only explain the world, the problem is to change the world." ”