Marx meets the working class by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
April 7, 2011

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In Paris, Marx finally encountered the social force capable of achieving liberation.

“I AM referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results…and being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.”

Marx was in a fighting mood in the months after the German authorities banned the Rheinische Zeitung, the newspaper he had edited in 1842-43. This is not to say that he was unhappy, far from it. After years of courtship, he and Jenny Westphalen were finally married and soon expecting their first child. As Howard Zinn put it in his play Marx in Soho, the two “were powerfully in love.”

The muckraking Marx by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
March 9, 2011

The owners of the Rheinische Zeitung hired a “devil of a revolutionary” as editor.

In 1841, things were looking good for Karl Marx. After completing his dissertation in philosophy, his mentor, the radical critic and philosopher Bruno Bauer, prepared Marx’s way to land a prestigious academic appointment. Only 23 years old and widely recognized as a rising intellectual star, Marx shot to the top of the most influential liberal circles in Germany.

Libya: The Empire strikes back By William Bowles

by William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
Crossposted on Strategic Culture Foundation
February 28, 2011

Pre-amble: I started writing this before events in Libya escalated, but it illustrates why it is imperative that we understand what exactly is going on in the Middle East and North Africa, especially when it comes to distinguishing between our wishes and reality. This is especially true of what is happening in Libya, where fact and invention (as well as wishful thinking) have become blurred in the press coverage.

Thanks to its rich reserves of oil and natural gas, Libya has a positive trade balance of $27 billion a year and a medium-high per capita income of $12,000, six times greater than that of Egypt … Witness the fact that nearly one million and a half immigrants, mostly from North Africa, work in Libya. Some 85 percent of Libyan energy exports go to Europe: Italy takes first place with 37 percent, followed by Germany, France and China. Italy is also in first place in imports to Libya, followed by China, Turkey and Germany.

Getting started with Marx and Engels by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
February 8, 2011

Todd Chretien begins a new series that goes through the works of Marx and Engels.

“PHILOSOPHERS HAVE only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” So wrote Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach when he had reached the ripe-old-age of 27.

Yet Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels spent their lives interpreting the world, covering page after page, year after year. Their Collected Works fill up 50 volumes, which average about 600 pages each.

The legacy of Karl Marx by Duncan Hallas (1983)

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by Duncan Hallas
SocialistWorker.org
January 14, 2011

In 1983, while the International Socialist Organization–the publisher of SocialistWorker.org–was still a very young group, British socialist Duncan Hallas came to the U.S. to give a national tour of meetings about Karl Marx, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Marx’s death.

Many of the meetings were small–often, they were held in living rooms. But those who attended couldn’t help but be persuaded by Duncan’s presentation. Here, we reprint an article by Duncan that appeared in Socialist Worker in March 1983–one of the best brief introductions to Marxism.

Marx’s theory of working-class revolution by Alan Maass

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by Alan Maass
SocialistWorker.org
Oct. 14, 2010

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In the first part in a series on “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx,” Alan Maass, author of The Case for Socialism, looks at the building blocks for Marx’s view of the world. This will be a session at Marxism Day Schools taking place around the U.S.

WHEN I was a senior in high school, I learned about what happened in England in 1215. But not 1213 or 1217. And I didn’t have a clue about anywhere else in the world at any point in the 13th century.

1215 was the first date we had to memorize in our Modern “World” History class. It was the year that a group of English barons cornered King John and forced him to agree to the Magna Carta, a document that limited the king’s powers and protected the barons’ privileges.

Marx becomes a Marxist by Brian Jones

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by Brian Jones
SocialistWorker.org
February 25, 2009

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Karl Marx developed his ideas in an era of when young people were dedicating their lives to a struggle for new rights and freedoms. Brian Jones examines Marx’s revolutionary ideas in this second of three articles.

HOW DID Karl Marx become a Marxist? Marx developed his idea not just through study–although he was a voracious reader (really, the word “voracious” doesn’t begin to touch it). Marx’s Marxism is really the theoretical product of his practical efforts to build a movement for radical change, and his observations of struggles taking place around him.

This is worth our attention because Marx is not only the author of a set of ideas about history, but the author of a unique method of looking at history. This method is widely known as historical materialism or dialectical materialism.

The return of Marx by Brian Jones

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by Brian Jones
SocialistWorker.org
February 16, 2009

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The ideas of Karl Marx–that class society creates great wealth for the few at the expense of the many–ring truer every day. Brian Jones examines Marx’s revolutionary ideas in this first of three articles.

IN THE last 150 years of U.S. history, you can’t point to a generation whose most active, radical layers have not been drawn to the ideas of Karl Marx.

This was true of the abolitionist movement (Marxist immigrants even fought with the Northern Army in the Civil War), the early pioneers of our labor movement, the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who passed through Socialist and Communist Parties in the first half of the 20th century, and of the many thousands who joined the Black Panther Party and other parties that declared themselves against capitalism and in favor of socialism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.