The ideas of Karl Marx
Karl Marx was one of the most important thinkers of Western civilization. For good or for ill, few individuals have had as profound an effect on the course of history as Karl Marx. Marx was a highly original thinker: like many original thinkers, he expressed many intelligent ideas and a considerable amount of nonsense. It is impossible, in one assignment, to do justice to anything as complex (and contradictory) as Marx's thought. What follows is a brief summary of what Marx was trying to say. …