The Lesson: Marxist Criticism
"The most insistent and vigorous historicism through most of the twentieth century has been Marxism, based on the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883)" (Marxist Criticism"). Even though this critical theory has been proved to be flawed, this theory is quite helpful when used to "interpret the failure of Marxist regimes" (Tyson 49). Some of the fundamental premises include the idea that how an economy functions is the base of every society, that all human events and productions have specific material/historical causes, and that people can be classified into two groups: The bourgeoisie, middle class, and the proletariat. It was through Karl Marx's life, that Marxism was founded upon. In 1843, after having been forced to discontinue his publication of Rheinische Zeitung which criticized contemporary political and social conditions, Marx made his way to Paris. There, Marx had come to take on communist beliefs. It was only two years later, that a good friend of Marx, Friedrich Engels, came to visit him. They both soon discovered that they "independently arrived at identical views on the nature of revolutionary problems" and and soon collaborated their theoretical principles of communism. It was not long after Marx's stay in Paris, that he was ordered to leave because of his "revolutionary activities." So, Marx and Engels decided to move to Brussels, and while there they began to organize and direct a network of revolutionary groups known as the Communist Correspondence, which eventually turned into the Communist League. Soon, "the first systematic statement of modern socialist doctrine was born: The Communist Manifesto. This idea was published in Marx's Critique of Political Economy in 1859. As a result of Marx's work, he was continuously being ordered to leave several cities and countries. In 1848 revolutions were occurring in France and Germany. Marx had posed a threat to the Belgian government making them "fearful that the revolutionary tide would