Karl Marx

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Karl Marx

• Who what what?

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What kind of guy would have said this?
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• History calls those men the greatest who have
  ennobled themselves by working for the common
  good experience acclaims as happiest the man who
  has made the greatest number of people
  happy.Marx, Letter to His Father (1837)

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• Reason has always existed, but not always in a
  reasonable form.Marx, Letter from the
  Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)

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• Political Economy regards the proletarian ...
  like a horse, he must receive enough to enable
  him to work. It does not consider him, during the
  time when he is not working, as a human being. It
  leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion,
  statistical tables, politics, and the
  beadle.Marx, Wages of Labour (1844)

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• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
  the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the
  ruling material force of society, is at the same
  time its ruling intellectual force. The class
  which has the means of material production at its
  disposal, has control at the same time over the
  means of mental production, so that thereby,
  generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack
  the means of mental production are subject to it.
  Marx, German Ideology (1845)

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• It will be the workers, with their courage,
  resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be
  chiefly responsible for achieving victory. The
  petty bourgeoisie will hesitate as long as
  possible and remain fearful, irresolute and
  inactive but when victory is certain it will
  claim it for itself and will call upon the
  workers to behave in an orderly fashion, and it
  will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of
  victory. ... the rule of the bourgeois democrats,
  from the very first, will carry within it the
  seeds of its own destruction, and its subsequent
  displacement by the proletariat will be made
  considerably easier..Marx, Address of the
  Central Committee to the Communist League (1850)

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This kind of guy.
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1. What are your expectations of Marxism, based on
   these quotations?
2. Read the extract on Marxism in your Critical
   Anthology and write a brief Dummies Guide to
   Marxism as a response.

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