Marx

14 Jul, 2005 190 Modern Western Philosophy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Karl Marx. “Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains”, “Religion is the opium of the people”, and “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. That should be enough for most of you to work out whom Radio 4 listeners have voted as their favourite philosopher: the winner of the In Our Time Greatest Philosopher Vote, chosen from 20 philosophers nominated by listeners and carried through on an electoral tidal wave of 28% of our ‘first-past-the-post’ vote is the communist theoretician, Karl Marx.So, when you strip away the Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet era and later Marxist theory, who was Karl Marx? Where does he stand in the history of philosophy? He wrote in his Theses on Feuerbach, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it” - which begs the question, is he really a philosopher at all?

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Guests

  • Anthony Grayling 10 episodes
    Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
  • Francis Wheen No other episodes
    Journalist and author of a biography of Karl Marx
  • Gareth Stedman Jones No other episodes
    Professor of Political Science at Cambridge University

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Programme ID: p003k9jg

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Auto-category: 193 (Modern Western philosophy of Germany and Austria)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. Workers of the world, unite.