Most Influential Socialist Thinkers Of Time

Most Influential Socialist Thinkers Of TimeThe philosopher, social scientist, historian and r organic evolutionary, Karl Marx, is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Although he was more often than not ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, frugal and political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement afterwards his death in 1883. Until quite recently almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claim to be Marxist. This very success, however, has meant that the original ideas of Marx hand oftentimes been modified and his meanings adapted to a great variety of political circumstances. In addition, the fact that Marx delayed publication of many of his writings meant that is been only recently that scholars had the fortune to appreciate Marxs intellectual stature.It is difficult to know what effect this would have on his later philosophy, barely we do know that Marx would be antith etical to religious belief, at one time pronouncing it, the opiate of the massesAfter schooling in Trier (1830-35), Marx entered Bonn University to study law. At university he spent much of his time socialising and rill up large debts. His father was horrified when he discovered that Karl had been wounded in a duel. Heinrich Marx agreed to pay off his sons debts just insisted that he travel to the more sedate Berlin University.Educated in the best universities in Germany at Bonn, Berlin and Jena, he was greatly influenced by the most prominent scholar of the previous generation, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. As youth turned to middle age, Karl Marxs views became more radical and finally hardened into the body of thought we know today. His journey to this point took him out of Germany where the newspaper he edited, the Rheinische Zeitung, was suppressed by the Government. He moved to Paris in 1843 and later to Brussels in 1845.Marx himself considered his theory of surplus-value hi s most important contribution to the progress of economic analysis (Marx, letter to Engels of 24 August 1867). It is through this theory that the wide scope of his sociological and historical thought enables him simultaneously to place the capitalist path of production in his historical context, and to find the root of its inner economic contradictions and its laws of motion in the specific relations of production on which it is basedMarx was partial derivative to Hegel and his theories and was influenced by Hegels views that history was a dialectical process. He did not adhere to Hegels spirituality . He was also influenced by Fuerbach, Saint-Simon, Proudhon and Bakunin. While living in Paris, he began to associate with the working clasas for the first time. He began to formulate his thought that revolution was the key to achieving balance between the upper class and the working class. He wrote and rundle on social change through revolution. He believed that there was great ener gy between proleterians and capitalists. Marx began to appeal to more of the common people during the early feeling days. American educatin became aware of soviet discipline reforms during the 1920s and through George S. Counts who visited Russia and brought their instructional system of reform to light in America. But only a guiltless 10 years later, American educators did not think societ cultivation was good.The theory associated with Marxism was developed in mid-19th century Europeby Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Although Marx and Engels did not write wideabout education, they developed theoretical perspectives on modern societies that havebeen social functiond to highlight the social functions of education and their concepts and methodshave served to both theorize and criticize education in the reproduction of capitalistsocieties, and to support projects of alternative education. In this study, I will first brieflysketch the classical perspectives of Marx and Engels, hi ghlighting the place of educationin their work. Then, I lay out the way that Marxian perspectives on education weredeveloped in the Frankfurt School critical theory, British cultural studies, and otherwise neo-Marxian and post-Marxian approaches grouped under the label of critical pedagogy, thatemerged from the work of Paulo Freire and is now global in scope. I argue that Marxismprovides influential and robust perspectives on education, still of use, but that classicalMarxism has certain omissions and limitations that contemporary theories of society andeducation need to overcome.The young Marx and Engels thus perceived that without education the workingclass was condemned to lives of drudgery and death, but that with education they had achance to create a better life. In their famous 1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx andEngels argued that growing economic crises would throw ever more segments of themiddle classes, and the elder peasant and artisan classes, into the impoverished situ ationof the proletariat and would thus produce a unified working class, at least one withinterests in common. They tell that the bourgeois class is constantly battling againstthe older feudal powers, among its own segments, and against the foreign bourgeoisie,and thus enlists the proletariat as its ally. Consequently, the proletariat gains educationand experience which it can use to fight the ruling class.The Marxist approach to education is broad constuctivist and emphasises activity, collaboration and critique, rather than passive absorption of knowledge, emulation of elders and conformism it is student-centred rather than teacher centred, but recognises that education cannot transcend the problems and capabilities of the society in which it is located.The Soviet, Chinese, and other Communist states were at most only partly structured along Marxist classless lines, and spot such Communist leaders as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong staunchly claimed Marxist o rthodoxy for their pronouncements, they in fact greatly stretched the doctrine in attempting to mold it to their own uses. The evolution of varied forms of welfare capitalism, the improved condition of workers in industrial societies, and the recent demise of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have tended to discredit Marxs dire and deterministic economic predictions. The Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes did not result in the disappearance of the state, but in the erection of huge, monolithic, and largely inefficient state structures.In recent years, many Western intellectuals have championed Marxism and repudiated Communism, objecting to the manner in which the two terms are often used interchangeably. A number have turned to Marxs other writings and explored the present-day value of such Marxist concepts as alienation. Among prominent Western Marxists were the Hungarian philosopher Gyrgy Lukaisand the Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci, both of wh om viewed Marxism as a liberation from the rule of political economy and believed in its relationship to the social consciousness. Marxisms influence can be found in disciplines as diverse as economics, history, art, literary criticism, and sociology. German sociologist Max Weber, Frankfurt school theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, British economist Joan Robinson, German playwright Bertolt Brecht, British literary critic Frederic Jameson, and the French historians of the Annales school have all produced work drawn from Marxist perspectives.