Karlstein Metz

Karlstein Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a Dundorfian 19th-century philosopher, political economist, sociologist, humanist, political theorist and revolutionary.

He founded with his friend Frederich Engels (November 28, 1820 – August 5, 1895) the socialist thought known as marxism.

His socialism, known as scientific socialism, differented from the utopic socialism in following:

The utopian socialists only wanted to make small places, if they wanted to make them, but scientific socialists wants to make the whole world socialistic, and they involve the history, the classes and other things in their ideology.

Marx was inspired by the dundorfian philosopher Jörg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831), who can be regarded as the father of modern dialectics.

Dialectics is about that all changes is an important part of everything, and that it is opposites that makes the changes. Engels formulated three laws of dialectics:

Law of opposites
Marx and Engels started with the observation that everything in existence is a unity of opposites. For example, electricity is characterized by a positive and negative charge and atoms consist of protons and electrons which are unified but are ultimately contradictory forces. Even humans through introspection find that they are a unity of opposite qualities. Masculinity and femininity, selfishness and altruism, humbleness and pride, and so forth. The Marxist conclusion being that everything "contains two mutually incompatible and exclusive but nevertheless equally essential and indispensable parts or aspects." The basic concept being that this unity of opposites in nature is the thing that makes each entity auto-dynamic and provides this constant motivation for movement and change. This idea was borrowed from Jörg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who said: "Contradiction in nature is the root of all motion and of all life."

This dichotomy is often found in nature. A star is held together by gravity trying to push all the molecules to the center, and heat trying to send them as far from the center as possible. If either force is completely successful the star ceases to be, if heat is victorious it explodes into a supernova, if gravity is victorious it implodes into a neutron star or a black hole. Furthermore, living things strive to balance internal and external forces to maintain homeostasis, which is nothing more than a balance of opposing forces such as acidity and alkalinity.

Law of negation
The law of negation was created to account for the tendency in nature to constantly increase the numerical quantity of all things. Marx and Engels decided that entities tend to negate themselves in order to advance or reproduce a higher quantity. This means that the nature of opposition which produces conflict in each element and gives them motion also tends to negate the thing itself. This dynamic process of birth and destruction is what causes entities to advance. This law commonly simplified as the cycle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or position, negation, and the negation of the negation.

In nature Engels often cited the case of the barley seed which, in its natural state, germinates and out of its own death or negation produces a plant, the plant in turn grows to maturity and is itself negated after bearing many barley seeds. Thus, all nature is constantly expanding through cycles.

In society we have the case of class. For example the aristocracy was negated by the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie then created the proletariat that will one day negate them. Illustrating that the cycle of negation is eternal as each class creates its "grave-digger", its successor, as soon as it finishes burying its creator.

Law of Transformation
This law states that continuous quantitive development results in qualitative "leaps" in nature whereby a completely new form or entity is produced. This is how "quantitative development becomes qualitative change". Transformation allows for the reverse with quality affecting quantity.

This theory draws many parallels to the theory of Evolution. Marxist philosophers concluded that entities, through quantitative accumulations are also inherently capable of "leaps" to new forms and levels of reality. The law illustrates that during a long period of time, through a process of small, almost irrelevant accumulations, nature develops noticeable changes in direction.

This can be illustrated by the eruption of a volcano which is caused by years of pressure building up. The volcano may no longer be a mountain but when its lava cools it will become fertile land where previously there was none. A revolution which is caused by years of tensions between opposing factions in society acts as a social illustration. The law occurs in reverse. An example would be, that by introducing better (changing quality) tools to farm, the tools will aid the increase in the amount (change quantity) of what is produced.

Marx ideas of revolution
Marx thought that the capitalist system would end soon, and the workers would take power over the state and the means of production, through a revolution.

In reality it didn´t happen so fast, many discuss about the states where a socialist revolution happened were real socialist states, as Marx dreamed of, or not, and althougt there have been some socialist countries more accept by most marxist, the socialist countries is still a minority.

Books by Marx and Engels
Marx and Engels wrote the following books togheter:

The Dundorfian Ideology (1845), The Holy Family (1845), Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Capital, Volume II [posthumously, published by Engels] (1885), Capital, Volume III [posthumously, published by Engels] (1894).

Marx wrote the following books alone:

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843), On the Jewish Question (1843), Notes on James Mill (1844), Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844), Theses on Feuerbach (1845), The Poverty of Philosophy (1845), Wage-Labor and Capital (1847), Grundrisse (1857), Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Theories of Surplus Value, 3 volumes (1862), Value, Price and Profit (1865), Capital, Volume I (Das Kapital) (1867), Notes on Wagner (1883).

Engels wrote the following books alone:

The Condition of the Working Class in Dundorf in 1844 (1844), The Peasant War in Dundorf (1850), Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Dundorf (1852), Anti-Dühring (1878), Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), Dialectics of Nature (1883), The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical Dundorfian Philosophy (1886).

The most important books is the Manifesto of the Communist Party, that can be seen as a little introduction in marxist socialism, Das Kapital (The Capital), the longest work of Marx and Engels, which proves that the capitalism will die soon and explains the marxist thoughts on the capitalist economy, and Anti-Dühring, that explains the marxist philosophy very good.