Karl Jaspers

Culture can be broadly defined as the signs, objects, activities, structures, and institutions through which we take meaning and pleasure from our social and material environment, express and define ourselves and communicate with others. Culture evolves, in part, through our creative interaction and engagement with cultural commodities. Matthew Arnold (1822-1883) saw the forms of mass culture that emerged after industrial revolution and urbanization in the nineteenth century as homogenized…

The essence of the communist ideology and the methods of its implementation. Communism originates from the socialist theory of Marx and Engels; they first proposed an ideology that radically changes the existing political regime, as well as the social and economic structure of the state. However, some political scientists and philosophers are convinced that the famous "Republic" of Plato and "Utopia" by Thomas More are the very first models of communist society. Communist…

In 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev allegedly said “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.”1 Indeed, the goals of Pope Francis’s green encyclical and the core ideas of Marxism do seem to overlap. However, these connections are purely superficial. Upon further inspection, fundamental theory of Marxism differs socially, ideologically and economically from Pope’s ideas, making it impossible to assume any form of parallel between these two. First, the major purpose of…

Gregor Mendel, known as the “father of modern genetics”, he was born in Austria in 1822. Mendel was sent to a secondary school in Troppau to continue his education, he grew up in a German speaking family and graduated high school in 1840. After his graduation he went onto a 2-year program at the Philosophical Institute at Olmutz University. Around 1854, Mendel began to research the transmission of hereditary traits in plant hybrids. At the time of Mendel’s studies, it was a generally accepted…

The central theme of Carnegie's argument about the Gospel of Wealth is that rich people are superior to all others and should be allowed to use their money to help the less "fit" people. Carnegie believed in Social Darwinism. He believed that the fact that a person was rich showed that he was more fit than others. This meant that the rich man was the one who knew the most about how to prosper in society. Carnegie believed that rich people should use their money to help the poor. But he did…

Inspired by the class revolt in France, the economic crisis of 1846-1847, and the industrial revolution, central Europe, including the nations of Germany and Austria, erupted in heated revolutions seeking equality/reform from their respective governments in February 1848. By March 1848, the German Confederation saw an uprising in the Urban and Rural Popular classes as a result of the “political powder keg” of Neo-Feudal regimes, the new political force of nationalism, and the alliance of middle…

If this said culture was only evident through one of his pieces, it would become clear that this opinion or constructed thought was one that was not incredibly valid. But in the case of Karl Marx, this is just simply not true. Just like the aforementioned Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology provides many interesting points and springboards that would help people think about the culture that Marx has developed through his sociological…

Selena Barreira Karl Marx Notes on: The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, and Capital Volume 1 Chapter 26: “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation” In chapter 26 of Marx’s Capital, he discusses a concept known as primitive accumulation and its role in political economy. He begins the chapter describing the process if how money is changed into capital, “how through capital surplus-value is made, and from surplus-value more capital” (461). But through this process there is a never-ending…

Everything you participate in has been given to you by society, including your anti-society music and clothing. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels offer an intensified look at how an individual’s consciousness is formed, through society. Life determining consciousness is a concept that Marx and Engels propose in The Communist Manifesto and The German Ideology. This concept is demonstrated within Lukacs’ work The Historical Novel. In relation to both works, this essay will focus on capitalist society…

The purpose of this paper is to examine Robert Gilpin’s, The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations as well as Robert Cox’s, Gramsci and International Relations Theory: an essay in method. Gilpin’s theory that transnational actors and processes are dependent upon specific patterns of inter-sate relations (Gilpin, 1971, p.404) will be compared and contrasted with Robert Cox’s understanding of Gramsci’s hegemony and how it may be adopted to understand problems of world order. Gramsci’s…