Name: Syeda Ayesha Urooj Naqvi

Name: Tahira Shaheen

Roll No: MBA-21S-006(MBA Weekend)
Roll No: MBA-21S-007(MBA Weekend
Class: Economic Development (542)
Assignment No: 1
 Karl Marx
German philosopher

Introduction
He is revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He is famous for his theories
about capitalism and communism.  He was COMMUNISM’s most zealous intellectual advocate.
His comprehensive writings on the subject laid the foundation for later political leaders, notably
V. I. Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, to impose communism on more than twenty countries.
He is best known for his passionate attack on capitalism, but he also presents us with serious
philosophic and cultural arguments. Marx’s work is generally divided into two periods: the more
philosophical, idealist, early Marx; and the more mature, scientific, and materialist Marx.
Despite this general split, however, in all of his work, Marx wavers between a focus on the
transformation of consciousness, and an insistence on the primacy of material conditions for the
formation of consciousness. Central to any interpretation of Marx or Marxism is a treatment of
this tension
Marx claimed that philosophy is based on its revolutionary and practical character, or “praxis,”
in light of the knowable direction of history. On the level of practical politics, Marx and his
followers debated the nature and proper scope of the intellectual leadership of workers’ parties,
the need for revolutionary transformation of state structures, and the question of the inevitability
of the transformation from capitalism to socialism. All of these issues originate in the central
Marxian concern for properly relating theory to practice, and can be seen expressed in various
forms in Marx’s treatments of Hegel, his doctrine of historical materialism, and even in his
economic teachings.
Personal Life
Karl Marx, His full Name was Karl Heinrich Marx, (born 1818, Rhine province, Prussia
[Germany].
Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children. His father, Heinrich, a successful lawyer,
was a man of the Enlightenment, devoted to Kant and Voltaire, who took part in agitations for a
constitution in Prussia
His mother, born Henrietta Press burg, she was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and
were descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl was born, his father—
probably because his professional career required it—was baptized in the Evangelical
Established Church. Karl was baptized when he was six years old.
Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, and at Berlin, was introduced to the philosophy of G.W.F.
Hegel. He became involved in radicalism at a young age through the Young Hegelians, a group
of students who criticized the political and religious establishments of the day. Marx received his
doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841. His radical beliefs prevented him from securing a
teaching position, so instead, he took a job as a journalist and later became the editor
of Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper in Cologne

After living in Prussia, Marx lived in France for some time, and that is where he met his lifelong
friend Friedrich Engels. He is famous for his theories about capitalism and communism. Marx, in
conjunction with Friedrich Engels, published The Communist Manifesto in 1848; The
Communist Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He
also was the author of the movement’s most important book, Das Kapital. These writings and
others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism.
.In Das Kapital (Capital in English), Marx argues that society is composed of two main classes:
Capitalists are the business owners who organize the process of production and who own the
means of production such as factories, tools, and raw material, and who are also entitled to any
and all profits.

Marx was inspired by classical political economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo,
while his own branch of economics, Marxian economics, is not favored among modern
mainstream thought. Nevertheless, Marx's ideas have had a huge impact on societies, most
prominently in communist projects such as those in the USSR, China, and Cuba. Among modern
thinkers, Marx is still very influential in the fields of sociology, political economy, and strands
of heterodox economics. Karl Marx with socialism, his work on understanding capitalism as a
social and economic system remains a valid critique in the modern era.

The other, much larger class is composed of labor (which Marx termed the "proletariat").
Laborers do not own or have any claim to the means of production, the finished products they
work on, or any of the profits generated from sales of those products. Rather, labor works only in
return for a money wage. Marx argued that because of this uneven arrangement, capitalists
exploit workers.
Another important theory developed by Marx is known as historical materialism. This theory
posits that society at any given point in time is ordered by the type of technology used in the
process of production. Under industrial capitalism, society is ordered with capitalists organizing
labor in factories or offices where they work for wages. Prior to capitalism, Marx suggested that
feudalism existed as a specific set of social relations between lord and peasant classes related to
the hand-powered or animal-powered means of production prevalent at the time.