and account of the past. Marx had a variety of works ranging from philosophical essays to a book that took Marx thirty-year to write. Karl Marx wrote many essays between the years of 1842 and 1847. These essays range from fifteen pages long to a seven hundred-page book (World Book Encyclopedia 237M). Eagleton states that the basic themes of these philosophical essays include Marx’s bitter view that the economy is oppressing human beings and his belief that political action “revolution,” is a necessary part of philosophy (4). The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. I t predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class, and the product will be a working classless society (World Book Encyclopedia 237M). Das Kapital was Karl Marx’s major work. He spent about thirty years writing it (World Book Encyclopedia 237M). Marx called it “Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie,” or A contribution to the critique of political economy (Marx 11). In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He also claims to have seen the many flaws of the system that would destroy it through periods of inflation and depression (World Book Encyclopedia 237M). The most serious flaw is that the free enterprise system accumulates more and more wealth, but becomes less and less capable of using this wisely (Eagleton 41). Through all of his works three key ideas prevail. Production and society is the first idea. The process of production according to Marx is a collective effort, not an individual one (385). The second idea is that there is a class struggle. According to Marx all of history there has been a struggle between the ruling and the working classes. Marx believed that private ownership was at the heart of the cla...
