kers will tell you) produces not a pride or satisfaction in their work, but rather a sense of alienation. Marx believed (many would say "idealistically") that a person could and should be something of a philosopher in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon, and perhaps a poet in the evenings. Whatever his utopian traits, Marx thought of himself as a social scientist, and his writings illuminate important aspects in the history of human societies, from pre-Christian times to the nature of capitalist society in nineteenth-century England, where his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels managed a factory and recorded documentary evidence on working class life. Marx's "materialist conception of history" is based on the following premises: that human beings, in all historical eras, enter into certain productive relations (hunting and gathering food, the relation of lord and serf, the contract between labor and capital-that is, certain economic foundations) and that these relations give rise to a certain form of social consciousness. He maintained that: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. . . ." Karl Marx was not a great influence during his life, but after his death it increased with the growth of the labor movement. His ideas, as interpreted by Lenin, continued to have influence throughout most of the twentieth century. In much of the world emerging nations were formed by leaders who claimed to represent the proletariat....
