After his teacher was dismissed from the philosophy faculty, Marx abandoned philosophy and took up journalism. Here he travelled across into Paris, Brussels and London where he also adopted new views on society and democracy. He was asked to leave in Paris because of his writings. In 1848 he was asked back to France as there was a working class movement, and was invited back. His government collapsed in 1849.
Karl Marx believed that Communism was the ideal political party as he distinguished capitalism from merchants. Merchants bought one thing from a market and sold off to another market for more money. Marx thought this was unfair and thought they were taking advantage of the difference between the markets. Marx believed that capitalism was prone for disaster. He suggested as capitalist countries invest more and more into new technologies; the higher the unemployment rate would increase, as the machines took place of the employees. Also with more machines available, things would be produced quicker and can be accessed easily; the prices for goods decrease and merchants would not work, as they would loose their profit. If there were no merchants around there would be no markets, and the public couldn’t buy goods. So Marx believed if they didn’t buy the goods the economic value of the government would decrease, businesses going bankrupt, public unemployed and citizens without essential goods. And with the economic value going down, the government couldn’t invest in more technology and technology was stalled. Marx assumed that this was a cycle of growth and collapse, and this constant cycle would demolish governments.
Marx believed in anti-Semitism, although he was brought up Jewish his hatred for Jews grew when he wrote an essay called “ The Jewish question”. He promoted his views to the public and convinced them to hate Jews too, and to hate Jewish capitalists even more. But little did he know that his influences on the public where so strong that they would soon hate non-Jewish capitalists as well.
Marx’s opinion on bourgeois democracy was that having freedoms in politics, through elections, in the economy, through markets was anti-social and foreign. Other liberals like Bauer believed in emancipation means freedom to choose. But Marx believed that in the best situation this is a very narrow idea of freedom. Marx was obviously not going to agree with bourgeois democracy as, bourgeois means middle class. Already this shows a class system, which Marx was against. Plus the bourgeois democracy only put ideas into practice when they would benefit.
Marx was a determinist, which meant he thought there were certain forces (you could say fate) that can make history predictable.
Marx believed that communism was the ideal party as unlike the bourgeois democracy there is no class system. And communism believes that there are certain rights that you shouldn’t be entitled to, for example freedom of press and movement, but bourgeois democracy believes you should have these rights. The reason why a communist country needs to prevent freedom of movement is, if you are trying to pay everyone equally, then higher and more educated employees will move abroad as they will get better paid for their efforts. The reason why Marx choose communism instead of capitalism is because Marx felt capitalism was cheating people off, for example merchants. Also the profit they were receiving didn’t go to the government it went straight into their own luxuries and this wasn’t fair on the people who were paying more for the goods when they could get it cheaper. Marx also believed that communism was the ideal party as they use their own produces instead of importing products, this saved money. Karl also thought the idea of communism fading into the background (as there would be no need of a government if everyone is equal, there would be no riots) was a good idea.
I think the idea of communism is a good idea, that everyone is equal, everything is owned by government. But I think in practice it wouldn’t work out, as the more educated employees would just feel left short.