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Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in the city of Trier, Germany. Marx was a revolutionary who advocated "merciless criticism of everything existing" and was the co-originator of the theories of "Revolutionary Socialism" or "Communism."

Marx held that history was a series of class struggles between owners of capital (capitalists) and workers (the proletariat). As wealth became more concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists, he thought, the ranks of an increasingly dissatisfied proletariat would swell, leading to bloody revolution and eventually a classless society.

Marx wrote extensively about the economic causes of this process in The Communist Manifesto (1843) and Das Kapital (1867).  His labor theory of value explained why labor is the source of all surplus value (profit) which is unjustly appropriated by the capitalists and invested in more machinery. This increasing accumulation of capital equipment, according to Marx, results in increasing output with a smaller labor force. As a result, the workers do not have enough purchasing power to remove from the market all of the goods produced by the increasing stock of capital, and cyclical depressions of increasing severity will eventually lead to a revolution.

Marx expected the new synthesis to be socialism. He believed that its organizations would grow out of the conditions of the time, and that a government by the working class would subsequently give way to a communal society operating under the slogan: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

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Directions:  Read the following passages, an once you finish write ONE SENTENCE for each passage that briefly summarizes the basic concept of each excerpt from Marx.

• We have seen that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class; to win the battle of democracy.  The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State . . .although these measures will, of course, be different in different countries.  Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:

• Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

• A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

• Abolition of all right of inheritence.

• Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

• Centralization of credit and banking in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

• Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

• Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

• Equal liability of all to labor.  Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

• Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

• Free education for all children in public schools.  Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.  Combination of education with industrial and agricultural production.

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Directions:  Read the passages above. Once you finish, write ONE SENTENCE in your own words (IYOW) that briefly summarizes the basic concept of each excerpt from Karl Marx. Write out your answers on the Economics Blackboard Discussion Board no later than midnight Sunday, September 23.