Karl Marx
German philosopher and economist (1818–1883) who diagnosed capitalism as a system of class exploitation and predicted its overthrow by the proletariat, founding a tradition that drove the 20th century's most consequential revolutions.
Marx's analysis begins where Hegel ends but inverts the method: rather than ideas driving history, material conditions, specifically the means of production and the relations of production, are the real motor. Every epoch's dominant ideas (religion, law, philosophy) are superstructure erected on the economic base. Change the base, and the superstructure changes.
His critique of capitalism identified surplus value as the mechanism of exploitation: workers produce more value than they receive as wages; the difference is appropriated by capitalists as profit. This structural extraction is the essence of capitalist class relations.
His concept of alienation is his most prescient: under capitalism, workers are alienated from their labor (they don't own what they make), from the products of their labor, from other workers, and from their own human nature. Modern workplace dissatisfaction is a mild version of what Marx analyzed as total alienation.
Where Marx was wrong, according to the Predictive History framework: he underestimated the power of nationalism and religion, assumed capitalism would collapse from its own contradictions (it adapted instead), and provided a template that authoritarian states could use to justify total control in the name of liberation.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Marx's theory of surplus value? ＋
Workers produce more value in a day than they receive as wages; the difference, surplus value, is appropriated by capitalists as profit. This is not fraud but the structural logic of capitalist production, making exploitation systemic rather than personal.
What did Marx get wrong? ＋
He underestimated nationalism's power to override class solidarity, assumed capitalism would collapse from internal contradictions (it adapted through welfare states and consumerism), and provided an ideological template that authoritarian states used to justify totalitarian control.