This extract is taken from Karl Marx, The Holy Family (1845). It was written at a time of upheaval in Karl Marx's life. Just after he was editor of the Rheinische Zeitung at Cologne in 1842. He worked there until his extreme radical views led to the suppression of the paper, and Marx went to Paris, where he met Engels and collaborated with him in works of political philosophy.

Engels was a (German philosopher) the son of a factory owner who, went on to supervised his father's business in Manchester and wrote influential essays on the social and political conditions in Britain in the 1840s, including The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), that influenced Marx's work on class at the time. Other influences at the time would have been Feuerbach on whom he wrote a thesis on in 1845. Feuerbach had a materialistic out look on history. He held to the philosophical theory that only physical matter is

real and that all phenomena and processes can be explained by reference to it. Related to this is the doctrine that political and social change is triggered by change in the material and economic basis of society. Also Hegel, Marx also based his theory of dialectical materialism on Hegel's work such as The Phenomenology of Mind (1807), which describes the progression of the human mind from consciousness through self-consciousness, reason, spirit, and religion to absolute knowledge although he later then rejected aspects of the philosophy claiming it was to abstract.

In ancient societies it was the struggle between slaves and slave masters, during the feudal societies it was between landowners and serfs and under capitalism, the state which most concerned Marx, the bourgeoisie control the means of production and treat the workers not as humans but as alienated commodities according to Marx. The only course open to the workers is to overturn the capitalist state in his view. He believed that it was man's nature (in the Paris Manuscripts) to be constantly developing, in co-operation with other men, himself and the world about him. Marx believed this would be overcome in the future as ' at a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production...from forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution' He believed this would change society as 'it would not only proclaim abstract rights that in fact only a few could enjoy, but achieve a general emancipation by penetrating to the real life of man - his socio-economic life. This would be the first revolution to involve the whole of society'

In the gobbet statement Marx is saying that the property owner class (the aristocracy, the upper class) and the class of the masses (the working class) suffer from the same self-delusion, but the former class finds in this self-delusion its authentication and prefers this to the position they perceive the class of the masses to be in. The masses on the other hand perceive themselves to be out of touch in their self-delusion and perceive themselves as subject to the property owner class. Marx viewed the class structure in society as divider, a separator of people. The word class was the unit into which people were divided.

Karl Marx is convincing

Some common words found in the essay are:
Philosophical Manuscripts', Hegel Marx', Phenomenology Mind, Daniel Ortega, People' Historical, Karl Marx, Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx's, Class England, Gobbet Essay, theory history, marx's theory, science history, karl marx, marx's theory history, property owner class, marx theory, forces production, property owner, class masses, self alienation, karl marx's,
Approximate Word count = 1628
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)