Every higher being above me, whether it is God, or whether it is a human-being, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness!

Should the state be a community of human-beings, and not a bunch of egos (Is) which are concerned exclusively about themselves, then the human-beings cannot exist without morality and must depend on morality. Thus, the nation and I are enemies to each other. In the heart of me as the egoist, no way such a community may be blessed. Never do I sacrifice myself for the community, but I do only exploit it! Why should I worry about the rest of the world?

I will be everything and will have everything that I can be and can have: How should I care whether or not others are similar or have similar.... I am not an I among other I's, but I am the solely existing I. I am alone.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Life

Mar Marx was born in the city of Trier on Mosel in May 5, 1818, as the son of Heinrich Marx, a Jew who converted himself to Lutheran Protestantism in 1816. His father Heinrich was first a lawyer and later became the Legal Council of the city of Trier. Karl Marx' grandfather and his great grandfather were Rabbis in Trier, Rhineland. Thus, his ancestors had long lived within the Jewish ghetto in the city of Trier and had had seldom outside-contacts. Their original family name was Levi. Herschel Levi was Karl Marx's father's orginal Jewish name. Unlike Karl Marx' great grandfather and grandfather, Herschel Levi was educated at the University and (for the first time) lived outside of the Jewish ghetto in the city of Trier. One year before Karl Marx was born, Herschel Levi decided to adopt the German name Heinrich Marx in stead of his Jewish name and converted to Lutheran Protestantism. As an intellectual at that time in Germany, Herschel Levi (Heinrich Marx) got the secular education and had widely read such writers of the Enlightenment Period as Leibniz, Rousseau Voltaire and Kant.The main reason for his conversion (and his change of their family name from the obvious jewish name Herschel Levi to Heinrich Marx) was very pragmatic, namely to retain his legal profession, as the policies of the shaky Prussian Government at that time did not allow to practice the law and hold a public position. Karl Marx was baptized in 1824. His father intellectually lived in the politically liberal tradition and the philosophically Kantian rationalistic traits. As a youth, Karl Marx was therefore, educated in that intellectual atmosphere.
The Little Karl already showed his gifted brilliance and intellectual potentials. At the same time, people, particularly his father who, being a lawyer, always sought compromises, was startled by his stubborn and domineering temperament as well as his self-centeredness and his little concerns about his siblings. Only two persons, when Karl Marx was a child, recognized his intellectual brilliance. One is needless to say his father Heinrich Marx.
The other was Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen, the neighbor and his father's superior, who held a high office position at the Prussian government. As his name indicates, Freiherr von Westphalen was one of the old, highly respected aristocratic descents in Westfalia. Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen not only discerned Marx' gifts, but helped him in various ways (including a great deal of financial assistance) to develop his intellectual brilliance. To the Levis, Freiherr von Westphalen was incomparably more respectable and wealthier, and they felt that the family von Westphalen belonged to the different class from theirs. Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen nevertheless adored the young Karl Marx for his gifted intellectual talent and allowed him to use his great private library. Karl quickly read all the books in the library and surprised everybody.
Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen had a lovely daughter called Jenny. Jenny was older than Karl by one year, but she, too, adored Karl and admired his brilliance. Karl was long in love with Jenny, too, as doubtlessly she was beautiful, charming, elegant and also extremely smart and gave a lot of her attention and support to the young Karl Marx. Despite class difference and financial imbalance, their love got its fruit in that 1837, Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen allowed Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen to be married. This of course surprised many of von Westphalen's relatives. Heinrich Heine, the great German-Jewish Romantic poet who took the refuge to Paris due to his political radicalness, wrote an eloquent tribute to Jenny Marx' charm and wit, as he met Jenny and Karl Marx in Paris. Jenny became the indispensable, firm and devoted spiritual support to Karl in solitude and his philosophical and political causes until her death (despite Karl Marx's affairs with their maid).
At the age of seventeen, Karl Marx obtained Abitur (High School Diploma). Under his father's guidance, first Karl Marx studied jurisprudence at University of Bonn under Professor Savigny and Professor Gans. Professor Gans, a specialist in criminal law, was a confirmed right Hegelian, who exercised a decisive influence on Karl Marx and his future philosophy. Thus, Marx changed his major to History and Philosophy first in Bonn, then transferred to Berlin. Karl Marx was totally engulfed by the profound insights and logical charms of Hegel's philosophy. "The fashion" then among the German intellectual circles was Hegel's philosophy and Marx spoke his thoughts in the eloquent Hegelian terminology. His brilliance and mastery of Hegel's philosophy in discussions surprised many. He earned his doctorate degree in Philosophy with his dissertation on Differenz der Demokritischen und Epikurischen Naturphilosophie (Differences between Democritus' and Epicurus' philosophies) at University of Jena in 1841. At that time, already Karl Marx was associated with the left Hegelians. Most of the Right Hegelians were devoted, faithful interpreters or popularizers of Hegel's philosophy and idealists (one exception may be Søren Kierkegaard, if we call him a Right Hegelian, as his many interpreters do). Contrary to them, the Left Hegelians were in general materialists in ontology and hard line social reformers and political radicals in political ideology, most of them were eager to turn upside down the social structure and dreaming a political and social revolution tomorrow. They were also radical critics of Christianity or often atheists. Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, his brother Edgar Bauer, Köppen and Max Stirner were the people with whom Karl Marx was associated.
Marx wanted to obtain his qualification as a lecturer (Habilitation) at the University Bonn under Bruno Bauer, an instructor in the radical left theology and Karl Marx' mentor and friend, but Bauer was dismissed from his position in Bonn for his radical thoughts. Thus, Marx had to give up the hope for obtaining his habilitation and became the editor in chief of Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine daily) in Cologne until it was forbidden to publish by the Prussian Government because of its reform-oriented and radically confrontational editorials in 1843. The young Karl was witnessed many miseries, poverty and hard labors of the wine farmers on Mosel and was whole heartedly sympathetic to the plight of the blue color workers in such big cities as Cologne, Berlin and Düsserldorf, etc.
In Fall, 1843, Karl Marx traveled to visit Arnold Ruge in Paris, with whom Marx published only one issue of Deutsch-Französicher Jarhbücher (German-French Annual Journals) in which marx published two of his articles, Die Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law) and Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question). From early 1840s till 1851, Paris was the international center of the various intellectual radicals, artists, musicians and poets who were passionately protesting against the establishments, the political status quo of the times, the political regimes (kings and tyrants), the Church and the army, the incomprehensible philistine masses, slaves and oppressors, enemies of life and the rights of the free humanity, and they spiritually formed a unique solidarity. The government was no longer controlled by the privileged class, but by the newly self asserting class called le bourgeois , while frequent riots against the oppression of the entrepreneurs by the blue collar workers were rampant, so that the intellectuals strongly felt the crisis and the transition of the period as well as le fin de ciècle. In the writings and letters of Balzac, Stendahl, Zola, Flaubert, Musset, Heine, Tocqueville, Delacroix, Wagner, Berlioz, Gautier, Herzen, Turgenev, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and List.
During his stay in Paris, Marx first saw the politico-economical problem of the society more from the point of view of the self-alienation of man from himself through the fact that the proletarians who no longer possessed the means of production (neither land, nor the machines and the factory) were forced to sell their own labor as the merchandise for their and their families' subsistence. Careful reading of Adam Smith, Ricardo, as well as the so-called Utopian socialists, Pierre Saint-Simons, Charles Fournier and Robert Owens and their followers. Karl Marx also got acquainted with a group of intellectuals, who called themselves communistes. They are a bunch of revolutionaries who intended to abolish the private property and other privileges of the bourgeois class. The Russian revolutionary and anarchist, Bakunin who was a resolute man of action, an adroit and fearless agitator, a magnificent orator, a dangerous megalomaniac consumed by a fanatical desire to dominate man, much later described Karl Marx as follows:

M. Marx is by origin a Jew. He unites in himself all the qualities and effects of that gifted race. Nervous, some say, to the point of cowardice, he is immensely malicious, vain, Quarrelsome, as intolerant and autocratic as Jehovah, the God of his fathers, and like Him, insanely vindictive.

There is no lie, no calumny, which he is not capable of using against anyone who has incurred his jealousy or his hatred; he will not stop at the basest intrigue if, in his opinion, it will serve to increase his position, his influence and his power.

Such are his vices, but he also has many virtues. He is very clever, and widely learned. In about 1840 he was the life and soul of a very remarkable circle of radical Hegelians-German's whose consistent cynicism left far behind even the most rabid Russian nihilists. Very few men has read so much and, it may be added, have read so intelligently, as K. Marx...

Works
A. ruge and K. Marx, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher 1884
K. Marx & F. Engels, Die heilige Familie, Gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten (The Holy Family) 1845
Misère de la philosophie, reponse a la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon (The Misery of Philosophy in Response to the Philosophy of Misery by M. Proudhon) 1847
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie ( The Capital, The Critique of Political Economy) 1. Buch 1867, 2. Buch 1885
Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe im Auftrag der Marx-Engels- Institut in Moskau (The Historical-Critical Complete Works in the contract with Marx-Engels- Institute in Moscow) 1927 1950

Philosophy

The Early Humanistic Period in the Continent
During the decade of 1840, the emphasis of Marx's writings was mainly on the humanistic concern about the exploitation of the proletarians. Through his application of Hegel's philosophy and Feuerbach's thought about the self-alienation of man from himself, Karl Marx saw this alienation of man from himself not in God, nor his relation to man as Feuerbach had done, but in the dehumanization of the proletariat. Namely, the human labor is, according to Karl Marx, the most essential and sacred nature of humanity. And yet, the proletarians had to sell their essence (labor) as a commodity (a thing) to subsist. To Karl Marx, what else could be more self alienating of man from himself as this? It is self alienation because a) man's most essential characteristic was reified in the sense that the human labor was made a commodity and he/she had sell it for his own and his family's subsistence. It is self alienating because 2) the proletarians were deprived of their freedom as that constitutes the wholeness of the humans, It is self alienating because 3) the proletarians were exploited and oppressed and forced into a most miserable conditions, i.e., into the most inhumane conditions.
Indeed, prior to Karl Marx' writings, there were other revolutionaries and communistes (as mentioned above) who were both gathering in Paris and were associated with Marx and also outside of Paris (like e.g. Robert Owens). They attacked the capitalists and the governments of Europe for those inhumane, miserable conditions of the proletarians and advocated the liberation of humanity by a social revolution in order to abolish the private property, which they considered the cause of the capitalistic pursuit (that they learned from Plato).
Therefore, Marx was not the first to notice the miseries of the proletarians, nor to advocate the socialism or communism as well as a violent revolution to recover the wholeness (der Heil) of the Proletariat as humanity. The uniqueness and originality of Karl Marx consists in his application of the concept of the self alienation of man from himself to the dehumanizing conditions of the proletariat and in his further applying the dialectic to the historical development of the society by making the Hegelian dialectic turned upside down.

The Historical, Dialectic Materialism
Marx advocated that the dialectic contradictions found in the history were not the abstract negation in Hegel's philosophy, but the concrete socio-economical discrepancy between the two classes, the class that possesses the means of production and the class that does not possess the means of production, the class of the exploiters and that of the exploited. Marx advocated that the historical development of a given society was determined by the material conditions of the society, not by such simple matter as constitutes the material substances, but by the economical conditions of the society.
Marx called this determining economical condition the real basis (die Realbasis) and the rest of the cultural phenomena, the super structures (die Überbau). To this latter belong the political organization, social organization and structures, the way and what we eat, the languages, arts, music, literature, philosophy and religion. Being a rationalist (still lingering in the spirit of the Enlightenment),
Marx considered religion as the opium of the masses who were exploited and oppressed to seek their hope and salvation in the afterlife and to desensitize themselves to miseries, poverties and hunger.
Marx attacked Hegel also that his approach in philosophy is upside down and insisted that the true determining factor of the historical development is not Spirit or Idea, but the economical conditions that is worth the mane of materialism.
Karl Marx contended that the history had developed itself dialectically through three major stages by means of each of their economical conditions. These economical conditions are, according to Marx, to be determined by the mode of production and the mode of exchange.
In the earliest stage of the society of humankind, people lived a primitive communistic society. In this society, the humans were either hunters or food gatherers or both. In their activities of obtaining the food and the other necessities of life, they possessed their own means of production such as bows, arrows and spears, or baskets or sticks for gathering of fruits, nuts and grain as stone mills. In this way of living, there were no private properties, but everything they owned were communal including marriage and children. No one member of the community would take advantage of the other, nor would exploit the other either. In this community, there were no need of exchange, since the people were for most parts self sufficient.
When they started agricultural activities, they started exchanging products they had produced. At the earlier stage, they exchanged their products by barter. The value of the commodity of exchange was, according to Marx, usually levelled out and approximately determined by the cost of the material and the cost of the labor hours. Therefore, how advanced the skill and the technique of specialized artisans might be and how sophisticated the distribution of labor might become, according to Marx, there would be no accumulation of the wealth of a few, nor exploitation of the masses by the selected few at all. In this society, all the social, the cultural, philosophical, religious conditions were determined by this mode of production and the mode of exchange and remained the same.
However, once currency was introduced, the mode of exchange was immensely modified. Until then, the exchange was done for the same of the products they wanted to use or consume. As soon as this new mode of exchange was introduced, the purpose of exchange became to make money, i.e., to accumulate wealth! This was the dawn of the private property. The human greed was inspired either to own more land by buying out or by waging a war to acquire the land. Where the majority of the farmers had not cared about the land (nobody had owned the land, but the land had belonged to all the members of the community), suddenly they had no land on which they were to cultivate (the means of production). The land belonged to a privileged few either who themselves acquired by force or by shrewd exchange, or who had inherited those lands from their parents. The landless peasants had to work for those who possessed the land. Here is the new mode of production was established, namely the mode of production in which the majority of the people did not have the means of productions (no land), while the few owned the means of production and did not work. In actuality, however, the story was not so simple as described above. On the contrary, there were landless peasants as well as farmers who owned their own lands. And yet, as the feudal system was established by the beginning of the Ancient civilizations, the humans were divided into the two classes by means of the economic conditions, namely the class which consisted of the farmers who did no longer possess the land (the means of production) and lived on the income of the farm products, while they were busy with warfare.
Thus, the notion of class was by Karl Marx distinctly defined by the economic terms. In this early stage of the commercial capitalism with the feudal system, still the humans were, according to Marx, not completely divided into two classes, although the peasants and the aristocrats were opposing to each other, but, according to Marx, there were plebeians who were merchants and artisans as well as slaves. In consequence, the opposition was blurred.
Through the French Revolution, the merchants and economic powerful financiers established themselves as the socially leading class called la bourgeoisie against the aristocrats. The latter quickly lost its economic power and the social, cultural and superstructural hegemony in the society.
And yet, the clear opposition in the sense of the contradiction between the opposing classes did not come into existence until the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe. Here the financiers and the industrial entrepreneurs like Engels' father became clearly the class of people who owned the means of production (factories, machines, materials and energy), while the peasants quickly became the proletarians who did not have anything else (the means of production) but their own labour to sell its sole commodity in order that they could subsist. Karl Marx maintained that this process of economic development from one step to the other was necessary and inevitable, as it is the scientific fact because the process followed the law of the dialectic materialism.
To Marx, it was equally absolutely inevitable due to the historical dialectic that today's capitalism will necessarily develop into and is taken over by the communism or socialism tomorrow where there would be no class distinction because the true equality, the true freedom and the true justice would be possessed by everybody, since there would be no private property,and it will be the society where people would work according to their abilities and would take according to their needs.
This development of class struggles is necessary and the victory of the oppressed class against the possessor class is inevitable, because the people of the oppressed class had revolted and has revolted against the oppressors as the historical necessary consequence, like the plebeians against the aristocrats for democracy and justice in 5th century BC in Greece, like the bourgeois against the aristocrats in the French Revolution for their motto of égalité, liberté et fraternité. Marx believed that being oppressed, the oppressed people were forced to have a clear awareness of their being exploited and would necessarily demand their rights and justice and would revolt against the economically dominating class, that would result in the triumph of the oppressed.
Marx held that it is the scientific fact and that it is due to the law of the historical dialectic. Marx thought that people like Saint-Simons, Fourier and Owens did lack the scientific theory of historical dialect, that would explain the necessity of this economic development, thus they remained as Utopian socialists.
According to Marx, how this class dichotomy came into existence and would be furthered may be explained by his theory of surplus value of human labor. As mentioned above, it was a "known fact" among the socialists prior to and contemporary of Marx that the private property was the cause for the human drive for accumulation of wealth. Thereby it was not yet to be economically explained how it would be possible for the oppressors and exploiters to accumulate their wealth, even if there were the human greed for even more accumulation of wealth. Marx argued that once currency was introduced as a revolution of the mode of exchange, it allows some people to buy a commodity not with its proper exchange value, but with less values. Since the value of a commodity consists of the value of materials and the value which human labor creates for producing it, it is not possible for the buyer to reduce the cost of the material, but it is possible to bargain the value of human labor which was put into the commodity for production. Since the proletariat has nothing else (the means of production) but selling their own labor as a commodity, they are easily forced to sell their labor far less than it actually worth. By so doing, the entrepreneurs would be able to sell the finished products much more than he paid for the material and the labor cost. This difference of value. The accumulation of wealth is only possible by means of this surplus value, namely by selling and buying the human labor as a commodity through the proletarians' being stripped off of the means of production. Their wages would be lowered, far lowered to the subsistence level of the proletarians so that the entrepreneurs as the factory owners would be able to exploit the laborers and accumulate wealth with the pretense of the need of the capital to renovate the means of production.
The next question to be answered by Marx will be why Marx and other agitators for revolution would make a special effort to stir up the consciousness of the proletariat and unify the proletarians to revolt against the capitalists, if indeed the revolution were inevitable due to the necessary law of historical dialectic. Karl Marx maintained that even if it were inevitable, the sooner the revolution would occur, the quicker the more authentic way of the human existence would be recovered as a whole. The true salvation of the humanity, where no exploitation occurred, where the proletariat would not have to sell their labor as commodity, where people work according to their abilities, and take according to their needs, where the true freedom of humanity is accomplished, must be achieved as soon as possible, for it should be the task of philosophy.
Humanity has to liberate themselves from the self alienation from oneself. Beyond this idea, we are able to see the eschatology of the Judeo-Christian theology. While in Hegel's philosophy, the final completion of his philosophical system is accomplished in today, Marx' authentic state of humanity with equality, freedom and justice will be achieved in tomorrow. The temporal phase is shifted from now to
tomorrow. The Final Judgement will come tomorrow.
Marx' economical determinism has revealed itself as untenable. Otherwise, his doctrine of the historical dialect itself, being a part of the so-called Überbau (the superstructure) and not the real basis, would not predict the future, as he wished for. The historical dialectic itself must be subject to the economic conditions as the real basis, if his theory were valid. Here is one of many Marx' inconsistencies.
We should not accuse of Marx for the failure of the socialistic states such as Soviet Union or Eastern European Socialist countries, for those nations' ideology was formed by the great revolutionary and the political visionary, called Lenin. The state of those countries was the dictatorship of the so-called proletariat through the vanguard of the communist party. Namely, according to Lenin, the proletarians were not able to awake themselves for the revolutionary awareness by themselves, but they are to be lead by the elite community party members. Lenin was also aware of the threat of the neighboring capitalistic civilizations, by which the socialist nations would not be able to totally forget the dream of the exploitation of the majority by the few privileged.
However, Marx' historical dialectic is equally speculative as Hegel's philosophy is if one would call Hegel's approach speculative. It was Marx' naive faith in the scienticity of dialectic in his economic-political theory as well as philosophy. Although it is no longer possible to see the oppreessed and exploited proletariat would revolt against the oppressing and exploiting capitalists' class, we are still evidencing the oppression and the exploitation in our society. It may still be possible for us to modify Marx' theory such that the current society will be fundamentally reformed through the ideology of Marx' basic philosophical thought.

Friedrich Engels (09-28-1820‹08-05-1895)

Life

Firedrich Engels was born as the son of a wealthy industrialist in Barmen, Westfalia. He stablished himself in 1837 as a qualified merchant and yet continued his studies in philosophy and theology. Then Engels was successful in his journalistic acitivies whereby he came to contact with Strauß and Feuerbach. In Berlin he attended Schelling's lectures and got acquainted with the left liberals such as Bauer brothers and Stirner, etc. In 1842 Engels published the article titled, "Schelling and Revelation, " which he wrote against Schelling's lecture about his criticism on religion. Through this article, Engels got acquainted with Anold Ruge, who in turn introduced him to Karl Marx in Paris in 1842. In the same year, Engels moved to Manchester to oversee his father's manufacturing plant. On his way home, Engels visited Marx and Ruge in Paris and collaborated with Mark on the article named, "Outlines of the Critique of National Economy," which appeared in die Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher.
Since then, the friendhsip and collaboration between Marx and Engels continued until Marx death. For the most parts, Marx was financially supported by Engels and Engels was probably the person who best "understood" Marx's endeavors. Engels sometimes published articles together with Marx. Having moved to London, Engels worked with the factory in Manchester, travelled not only within Europe,but aalso went to America once. He died in London on August 5, 1895.

Works

Friedrich Engels Schriften der Frühzeit. Aufsätze, Korreespondenzen, Briefe, Dichtungen aus den Jahren 1838 bis 1844 gesammelt and herausgegeben von Gutav Mayer, Berlin 1920
Herrn Euigen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft 1878
Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassichen deutschen Philosphie, 1888
Sammulung von Aufsätze hersg. von Riasanow, 1925
Grundsätze des Kommunismus hersg. von E. Berstein, 1914
Manifest der kommunistischen Partei mit Karl Marx, 1848
Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft 1883
Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und Staats 1884
Zur Geschichte des Urchristentums, in : Neue Zeit, 1894-1895
Aus dem Briefwechsel zwischen F. E. und Karl Marx 1844-1883 hersg von A. Bebel und e. Berstein
1913

Philosophy

Friedrich Engels' philosophy was in his early years under the influence first of Hegel, then the left Hegelians such as Strauß and Feuerbach, then was strongly molded by Marx' thoughts through the collaborations with Marx. His first work, "Mr. Eugen Dühring's Waltzing around the Science" in 1878. Three chapters of this work were later made independent into a book published under the title, "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science." When Engels published an article about the materialistic historical view in the weekly paper called, "The People," on August 6, 1859, his own philosophical viewpoint was established as the so-called historical materialism. This view point was supposed to be developed through the influences from Feuerbach and Marx in particular. Although Marx' historical materialism was far more sophisticated (therefore, more complex) than Engels' thought which was far more simplistic. Engels believed that materialistic-dialectic history would become an exact science like physics or mathematics and he did everything to make it so. According to Engels, the well-planned, conscious organization must be established in stead of anarchy. Namely, the social laws are to be established and freely applied, while the human-being ought to create the history according to those laws. According to Engels, "the humanity made a leap from the kingdom of necessity to that of freedom. In this article, Engels defended Hegel against Dühring's criticism. According to Ziegenfuß, Engels wrote almost at the same time to A. F. Lange and told him that he was no way a Hegelian, and yet he could not help but having admiration to and influence from that good old colossal guy.
In his Ludwig Feuerbach and the Beginning of the Classical Philosophies (1888), Engels felt that he followed Hegel's approach in "The world is not to be grasped as a complex of the finished products, but the complex of processes. In those processes, apparent stable things as much as their mental copies in our head and concepts must undergo an incessant metamorphosis of change and vanishing, in which ,despite all apparent contingencies and all momentous retreats, ultimately a progressive development will persist." Epistemologically, Engels took a very naive copy theory as his own viewpoint. He affirmed that we are able to develop a faithful copy of the real world. Engels contended against Hegel;s development of the concept,

In stead of viewing the real things as copies of this or that stage of the absolute concept, we must understand the concepts of our head once again materialistic as the copies of the real things...

Die politische, literarische, künstlerische usw. Entwicklung beruht auf die ökonomischen. Aber sie alle reagieren auch aufeinander und auf die ökonomische Basis... Die Menschen machen ihre Geschichte selbst, aber in einem gegebenen, sie bedingenden Milieu, auf Grundlage vorgefundener, tatsächlicher Verhähltnisse, under denen die ökonomischen, so sehr sie auch von den übringen politischen und ideologischen beinflußt werden mögen, doch in letzter Instanz die entscheinden sind und den durchgehenden, allein zum Verständnis führenden roten Faden bilden.