1. T H E I N F L U E N C E O F K A R L M A R X

2. Socialism is at its core an economic philosophy.
 Communism is economic and political in its requirement that government be the central owner and decision maker in all matters. 
Communism rejects any religion and in a true Communist state religion is effectively abolished.
Which one is better?
Communism and socialism are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes. The two are interchangeable in some ways, but different in others. In a communist society, the working class owns everything, and everyone works toward the same communal goal.

4. BACKGROUND
Karl Marx was an unlikely candidate to become a champion of the oppressed, as he grew up in a middle-class Prussian family.
Marx was hereditarily Jewish, though his father converted to Lutheranism to avoid legal restraints in his law career.
Marx’s father was interested in classical liberalism, which was considered suspect within Prussia at the time.
As a university student in Berlin Marx became captivated by the teaching of George Hegel, who pushed a notion that theirs was a time a tremendous social change & upheaval.
Marx moved from Paris to Brussels to London as a result of his incendiary writings and escape from Prussian spies.

5. VIEW OF PAST
Like Hegel, Marx came to believe that a careful study of history was a key to understanding society how to reform it.
Theorized that we are naturally inclined to be creative in our labor/productivity (we long to determine our own task)
While the dominant economic organizations would change as a result of technological advancement, ultimately societies were split into “haves” and “have nots”
Religion served to distract and confuse people from a realistic view of the oppression of their societies.
Politics, law, arts, & culture all served to protect status quo.

6. VIEW OF PRESENT
The industrialized society in which Marx lived was fraught with examples of how capitalism breeded alienation & oppression.
Industrial work alienated man’s natural sense of creative labor, instead leaving him to repetitive, alienating work
Even the capitalist had become an unwilling participant to capitalism, himself enslaved by the laws of the market
Society was increasingly segregated into 2 classes:
Bourgeoisie: those who owned means of production
Proletariat: those who sold their labor for a wage
These conditions that would lead to the fall of capitalism

7. VIEW OF FUTURE
Marx predicted a future in which capitalism would eventually fail and be replaced by less oppressive social systems.
Marx hoped that he and other thinkers would eventually create class consciousness among the Proletariat
Through realization their oppression workers will violently reorganize society by abolishing private property
A dictatorship of the Proletariat (socialism) will emerge to eventually eliminate inequality among the masses
As true equality gradually will be achieved the need for the state become obsolete and a classless society is achieved (communism)

8. INFLUENCE
Marx’s ideas would be adopted--or rather adapted--by revolutionaries around the world in order to gain authoritarian political power.
Engels worked tirelessly after Marx’s death to promote and organize his writings
Socialists around the world began to translate and embrace many of Marx’s ideas
Political strongmen seized upon the mass appeal of Marx’s ideas to create authoritarian regimes in which millions were killed in the name of Communism