what are the teachings of Karl Marx?

Question

What, in your opinion, is right, and what is wrong?

Answer 1

In original concept, his heart wa sin the right place, in reality, it is "utopia", because human nature is incompatable, this leads to teh need for strict totalitarian control, or tyranny and oppression, removing all choice, all freewill, in order to make it work, and then, it just consumes wealth, not creates it, because humans have no incentive to improve, advance, invent, or work harder. that is why before Karl Marx died he insisted that he was not a "Marxist", because he did not like what he lived to see it become.

Answer 2

Karl was the least funny of the Marx brothers. Sorry, bad joke.
Marx believed that history showed that all societies were involved in a class struggle for supremancy and that the capitalist system would collapse from it's own internal conflicts.
He believed that a more socially equable system would arise where everybody contributed to society in whatever way they could and society would provide them with all that they need.
The reality when these principles of equality were applied within post revolutionary Russia was more like George Orwells animal Farm, where all men were equal but some where more equal than others.
The philosophy of Marx has been consistently perverted and misrepresented but generally he probably did not make enough allowance for human nature and the fact that the strong will control the weak when they can.

Answer 3

What is wrong is assuming that once you take away the market system individuals will continue to be motivated to be productive -- obviously (USSR) they were not. What is right you can look at all of history as the history of class struggle.

Answer 4

Read "Das Kapital," by Marx. Don't rely on others to tell you what you should decide for yourself. Here's a link to a website to get you started.

http://www.awerty.com/das2.html

Answer 5

his revolutionary idea is to liberate the proletarians and form a classless society based on communism.his ideas were theoretical and were implemented with some changes in communist countries.people need not worry about crime,education and health care which is very high in capitalistic countries. disadvantage is free thinking and ideas are banned.

Answer 6

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer! He had a point.

Answer 7

Main ideas

The main ideas to come out of Marx and Engels' collective works include:

* means of production: The means of production is the combination of the means of labor and the subject of labor used by workers to make products. Means of labor include machines, tools, plant and equipment, infrastructure, and so on: "all those things with the aid of which man [sic] acts upon the subject of labor, and transforms it." (Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., 1957, p xiii). The subject of labor includes raw materials and materials directly taken from nature. Means of production by themselves produce nothing -- labor power is needed for production to take place.
* mode of production: The mode of production is a specific combination of productive forces (including the means of production and labour power) and social and technical relations of production (including the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets, often codified in law; cooperative work relations and forms of association; relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes).
* base and superstructure: The base refers to the means of production of society. The superstructure is formed on top of the base, and comprises that society's ideology, as well as its legal system, political system, and religions. For Marx, the base determines the superstructure. The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a distinction between actual entities "in the world".
* class consciousness: Class consciousness refers to the self-awareness of a social class and its capacity to act in its own rational interests.
* ideology: Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, including its ideology, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can create false consciousness such as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital ~ a degradation of human life).
* historical materialism: Historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies).
* political economy: The term "political economy" originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the new-born capitalist system. Political economy, then, studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material, and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital, and how this manifests itself in economic activity.
* exploitation: Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives; in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labour, in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit.
* alienation: Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" (Gattungswesen, usually translated as 'species-essence' or 'species-being'). Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism - it isn't necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated. He believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.