Realism in England, France, and America At the end of the Napoléonic wars, the French were able to take a good hard look at the impact of the Industrial Revolution, going full speed ahead in Britain. Appalled at the misery of the lower classes, the industrial smog of...
CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH AND GERMAN IDENTITY Caspar David Friedrich personified German Romanticism, producing paintings that became icons of the movement. Working in a nation under alien occupation, Friedrich found the intersection between pantheism and the alienation...
THE PROBLEM OF ART Marxism as Methodology In his anthology, Marxism and Art, Maynard Solomon recounted that although both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were interested in the literary arts early in their respective careers, they both were distracted by philosophy....
THE PROBLEM OF CAPITALISM The Birth of Consumption As philosophers who inherited the goals of the Enlightenment, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed the main theme was freedom, freedom to become a full human being, creating oneself through free choices. They...
THE PROBLEM OF PROPERTY Engels and Ownership For centuries, philosophers had been trying to determine the origin of property. Almost without exception, from Rousseau to Hobbs, property was the equivalent to the apple in the Garden of Eden. Property was the cause of...
