Karl Marx

As a student of Sociology I studied many of the World’s greatest thinkers and none of them affected me as much as Karl Marx (1818 - 1883). While many dismiss him for being a “communist” and an antagonist of the Capitalist system, he was actually, at least to me anyway, an individual who cared deeply for the common man/woman and what it meant for such an individual to give up the one thing that we all have to exploit: our labor, be it physical or creative.

The industrial revolution allowed the poor and impoverished of society to eke out an existence for some form of remuneration, be it a spot of land to build a shack or an hourly sum just enough to stay alive. While this may sound like a good thing, it left those who labored feeling alienated and without purpose, spiritual or otherwise. Simply put:

Under capitalism, social relationships of production, such as among workers or between workers and capitalists, are mediated through commodities, including labor, that are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one’s own labor — one’s capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one’s own nature; it is a spiritual loss. (Wikipedia) Click to continue »