70-1831) was the dominant intellectual influence throughout Germany and the university when young Marx entered the University of Berlin in 1835. His [Hegel] idea was that reality is not fixed and static, but changing and dynamic. Life is constantly passing from one stage of being to another; the world is a place of constant change. But Hegel did not believe the change itself is arbitrary. On the contrary, he thought it proceeds according to a well pattern or method, termed a dialectic, where reality unfolds, the contradictions are resolved and something new emerges; i.e. thesis-antithesis-synthesis.Marx became strongly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel and by a radical group called the Young Hegelian, who, at that time was attempting to apply Hegelian ideas tot he movement against organized religion and the Prussian autocracy. In 1841, Marx received his Ph.D. in philosophy and in 1842 became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, a liberal democratic newspaper, for which he wrote increasingly radical editorials on social and economic issues, and for which the paper was eventually banned in 1843. So, Marx, with his new bride, Jenny von Westphalan, moved to Paris.Marx continued his criticism of society, at which time he was also being influenced by the philosophies of Ludwig Feuerbach, who argued that God had been invented by humans as a projection of their own ideals. Marx met Friedrich Engels, another Young Hegelian in 1844.In 1845, Marx moved to Brussels and then to London in 1847, which during this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and the like. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Rather, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class ...
