Karl Marx: Modern Revolutionary.

Essay by ChristopherWallace November 2003

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"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make under the

circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted

from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living

.And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something

entirely new, precisely in such epochs revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up spirits of the

past to their service an borrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present

the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language,'(Tucker,

Ed. 595)

Karl Heinrich Marx; a name, which is often a victim of slanderous, misguided

interpretations put forth by those blinded by the evils of modern day or likely past actions of

communist nations of the world.

Marx's works are clearly the paternal figure in the birth of

communism in Europe. The end result of this concoction of political and economic critics would

split the world in two and start a frozen war of brinkmanship. Where each opposing side took as bold a measure as possible to show their tenacity. However in the time of Karl Marx his working was drastically influenced by the cruel and changing world around him.

These influences are shown in the polemic style used to write' The Communist Manifesto" Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier in Rheinish Prussia. His family was Jewish, but converted to Protestanism in 1824. This may have had an effect on Marx's feelings on religion as told by MacLellan "...Marx belived that religion was the most extreme form of alienation and the point where any process of secularization had to start,