KEY PERSONALITIES

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

        Adam Smith was a British philosopher and economist born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland and educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford. From 1748-1751, he gave lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres in Edinburgh. In 1776, he wrote his major work called The Wealth of Nations. His central thesis was that capitalism is best employed for the production and distribution of wealth under laissez-faire and free trade. In his view, the production and exchange of goods can be stimulated, and a rise in the general standard of living is only attained through an efficient operation of private industrial and commercial entrepreneurs acting with minimum regulation and control by the governments. In his principle of the "invisible hand," he stated that every individual in pursuing his or her own good is led by an invisible hand to achieve the best good for all. Therefore any interference with free competition by government is almost certain to be harmful.

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

        Thomas Malthus was a British economist who was born near Guildford, Surrey, England and educated at Jesus College, the University of Cambridge. He became a curate of the parish of Albury in Surrey in 1798. From 1805-1834, he was a professor of political science and modern history at the college of East India Company at Haileybury. His main contribution to the economy was his theory of population published in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). According to Malthus, the population tends to increase faster than the supply of goods available for its needs. The effect of this tendency is to depress living standards continuously to a bare subsistence level. Whenever a relative gain occurs in overpopulation growth, a higher rate of population increase is stimulated; if the population grows too much faster than production, the growth is checked by famine, disease, and war. The writings of Malthus encouraged the first systematic demographic studies. He also influenced David Ricardo whose "iron law of wages" and theory of distribution of wealth contain some elements of his theory.

Friedrich Hegel (1770-1783)

        Friedrich Hegel was a German idealist philosopher who became one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. He was the son of a revenue officer with the civil service. Encouraged by his father to become a clergyman, he entered the seminary at the University of Tubingen in 1788. In 1801, he went to the University of Jena where he studied, wrote, and eventually became a lecturer. At Jena he completed The Phenomena of Mind in 1807. Hegel became editor of the Bamberger Zeitung in Bavaria. Since he disliked journalism, he moved to Nuremberg where he served for 8 years as headmaster of a gymnasium. His Heglian Dialect method involves the result of the conflict of opposition. The thesis might be an idea of a historical movement. Such an idea or movement contains within itself an antithesis or a conflicting idea or movement. As the result of conflict, a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. The synthesis becomes the a new thesis that generates a new antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis and the process continually occurs. Karl Marx used Hegel's dialect in his explanation of the history of class struggles.

David Ricardo (1772-1823)

        David Ricardo was a British economist born in London. He left school at the age of 14 to join a brokerage house; by his mid-20s he made a fortune on the stock market. In his major work, Principles of political Economy and Taxation (1817), he offered several theories based on his studies of the long-range distribution of wealth and he also came up with the "iron law of wages." He feared that in increase in population would lead to a shortage of production land. His labor theory of value, which influenced Karl Marx, states that wages are determined by the price of food, which is determined by the cost of production, which is determined by the amount of labor required to produce the food; labor determines value. For the last 4 years of his life, he was a member of the British Parliament.

Ludwig Feurbach (1804-1872)

        Ludwig Feurbach was a German philosopher who substituted religious psychology for orthodox religion and developed one of the first German materialistic philosophies. He was born in Landshut and educated in Berlin and Erlange. In his youth, he was a pupil of Hegel, whose philosophy of idealism he later rejected. Feurbach stated that the existence of religion is justifiable only if it satisfies a psychological need; a person's essential preoccupation with the self and the worship of God is actually worship of an idealized self. According to Feurbach, people and their material needs should be the foundation of social and political thought. Marx and Engels saw in Feurbach's emphasis on people and human needs a movement toward a materialistic interpretation of society, which they later formulated as the theory of historical materialism.

Louis Blanc (1811-1882)

        Louis Blanc was born in Madrid, Spain and educated in Paris. He was a French Socialist leader and historian. In 1839, he established the magazine Revue du Progresas as an organ for his socialist documents. Blanc's concept of social order was that the workers could solve their problems only by revolutionary action and in formulating the social principle, later adapted by Marx, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Blanc believed that this principle could be realized through the creation of social workshops financed by the state and controlled by the workers. In the revolution of 1848, Blanc became a leader of the provisional republican government that came into power following the abdication of King Louis Philippe. After the bloody suppression of the workers' uprising in Paris in June 1848, he was forced to flee for his life, and he lived 22 years in exile in England.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

        Karl Marx was a German political philosopher and revolutionist, and cofounder, with Engels, of communism. He was one of the most influential thinkers of all time. Marx was educated at the universities of Boun, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly after writing his first article for the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper, he became editor. In 1843, because of controversy with the authorities he resigned and soon afterward the newspaper was forced to discontinue publishing. Marx then went to Paris where he met Engels. As a result of his further studies in philosophy, history, and political science, he adopted communist beliefs. In 1845, he was ordered to leave Paris and settled in Brussels where he began organizing and directing a network of revolutionary groups. In 1847, he was commissioned to write the Communist Manifesto. he believed that the history of society is the history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. He drew the conclusion that the capitalist class would be overthrown and that it would be eliminated by a worldwide working-class revolution and replaced by a classless society. In Cologne he established and edited a communist periodical, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and engaged in organizing activities. In 1847, Marx joined the Communist League with Engels. In 1849, he was arrested on the charge of indictment to armed insurrection; he was acquitted and expelled from Germany. His periodical was suppressed. Also, in the same year, he was banned from France; he spent the remainder of his life in London. During that time, he wrote Das Kapital (Capital) in which he developed his theory of exploitation of the working-class by the capitalist class through the appropriation of the capitalists of "surplus value." The Communist League dissolved in 1852 and in 1864, the First International was set up. Marx and his family was financially supported by Engels and he died after a long suffering in 1883.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

        Friedrich Engels born in Barmen. He was a German revolutionary political economist and cofounder, with Marx, of Communism. He came from a wealthy Protestant family. In 1842, he converted to Communist beliefs by German socialist Moses Hess. He worked for a textile firm in Manchester, England between 1842 and 1844. His experience and studies convinced him that politics and history could be explained only in terms of the economic development of society; he believed that the social evils of the time were the inevitable result of the institution of private property and could ony be eliminated through a class struggle culminating in a Communist society. In 1848, he worked in a textile mill again and throughout his years he became the chief financial support of Marx and his family. Engels joined the firm that owned the mill in 1864 and retired 5 years later.