Marx and Engels

Introduction

It is a truth now universally acknowledged that capitalism's most insightful philosopher is Karl Marx. For over a decade, the one time ideological ogre 'responsible' for the killing fields of Cambodia and excesses of the Soviet Union has been lauded as the first thinker to chart the true nature of the free market(Lynn, Thomas, Barbara, Bonnie, 56). 'Marx's Stock Resurges on a 150-Year Tip' was how the New York Times marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Communist Manifesto - a text which, more than any other, 'recognised the unstoppable wealth-creating power of capitalism, predicted it would conquer the world, and warned that this inevitable globalisation of national economies and cultures would have divisive and painful consequences (Lynn, Thomas, Barbara, Bonnie, 56).'

In 2005, the French politician-cum-banker Jacques Attali went further, to pinpoint Marx as the first great theorist of globalisation. Today, in the midst of a once-a-century crisis of capitalism, Das Kapital has raced to the top of the German bestseller lists and even President Sarkozy has been caught leafing through its pages.

Discussion

In the context of the industrial revolution Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels discovered that social revolution is defined by a series of stages whose fundamental origins are technological revolution in the means of production (Jellissen, 45). As the technological revolution unfolds, the qualitatively new forces of production come into conflict with existing productive relations, and thus begin an epoch of social revolution that ends with new productive relations corresponding to the new technology (Lynn, Thomas, Barbara, Bonnie, 56). This discovery marks the beginning of genuine social science, and is the theoretical foundation for comprehending and facilitating the revolutionary process (Jellissen, 45). The current revolution in the means of production that we are witnessing in the world today is the beginning of just such a process, the beginning stages of a revolution that fully confirms Marx and Engels' scientific discovery.

Marx and Engels directly witnessed how the industrial revolution created a new class of proletarians that possessed no property other than their labor power (Lynn, Thomas, Barbara, Bonnie, 56). In the Communist Manifesto in 1848, Marx and Engels projected that this class would overthrow capitalism and create a communist society. We now know that this projection was premature: without the introduction of a new quality into the means of production which could facilitate the overthrow of capitalist relations, the industrial proletariat in Europe, North America and ...