"It is not easy to speak of Marx as a philosopher. Karl Marx himself, at the beginning of his thought, was seized by a deep astonishment that shook him. He marvelled at the contrast, at the discrepancy between, on the one hand, the scientific optimism of the mid-19 century,
the Hegelian grand yes to his time, and, on the other, the misery and impotence of the working masses in that world which was his: the world of early capitalism." Jeanne Hersch in "The Philosophical Astonishment. Insights into the History of Thought."
Where is the shaken amazement of us today in late capitalism in the face of the innumerable crimes and victims of capitalism to this day and the ever-increasing misery in the ever-increasing wealth of the few from the ruling class of the very great fortunes?
According to Jeanne Hersch, the driving forces of Karl Marx's thinking are Hegelian thinking, from which he borrows totality and dialectics (the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis), historical-dynamic thinking and the omnipotence of history.
However, he turns the dialectic around. In contrast to Hegel, Marx claims that true reality is not that of the spirit (Hegel's world spirit), whose externalisation would be nature, but material, social and economic reality, through which everything else can only be explained.
Karl Marx fundamentally starts from human reality, not from universal spirit, not even from untouched nature.
Following the German thinker Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx also rejects God. Instead of seeking a superman in heaven, man should seek his own reality on earth.
"If we want to have an effect on people & their history, as well as on their self-awareness, we must change the material conditions, &according to Karl Marx, the relations of production are decisive. Today we would say the property relations (the distribution of wealth on earth).
Now Karl Marx's famous thesis also comes into play: "Classical philosophy interprets the world, but what matters is to change it."
What the many who called themselves Marxists have done with Karl Marx's thoughts (writings) after his death cannot be blamed on Karl Marx himself. But his thinking should be critically rethought and developed.
What else should Karl Marx tell us - after the failure of "real existing socialism"?
Jean Ziegler wants Marxism to be continued as a philosophy, as the only system of thought that not only suffices to explain the world, but also encourages change.
Jean Ziegler wants Marxism to be continued as a philosophy, as the only system of thought that not only suffices to explain the world, but also encourages change.
"Marx is the only thinker of the emerging industrial age, the epoch of rapidly expanding commodity rationality, who recognised the alienation of man and opposed it with an alternative totality.
His philosophical work contains the radical critique of a social system that alienates man from himself." (Jean Ziegler) 
Therefore, Ziegler pleads for a "Marxism of resistance", resistance against the disintegration of the world into a small island of the blessed and the great sea of the poor and starving.
The victory of capitalism only briefly conceals the fact that the prosperity - and also democracy - in the first world was and is bought with the misery of the vast majority of the world's population.
Prosperity and democracy are being increasingly dismantled on a limited earth, also in the first world, for the greed of the few.
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