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...
GERMAN ROMANTICISM AND THE SPIRITUAL PAINTINGS OF CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH As with Spain, the key to German Romanticism is the presence of Napoléon’s “liberating army” on German soil. While much of Germany was loyal to the French emperor, especially...
MODERN ALIENATION Marx and Capitalism Aware of Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx was concerned with alienation and recognized the connection between the estrangement of human beings from themselves and from nature and the Industrial Revolution. Marx re-wrote Schiller’s...
MARX AND ENGELS Today it is fashionable in some quarters to dismiss Karl Marx because of his apparently “failed” theory of an inevitable revolution in which the lower classes, realizing their exploitation, would rebel against those who owned the means of production....
