ANTH10001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Friedrich Engels, Dialectical Materialism, Wield
28 Jul 2018
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Married into prussian aristocracy jenny von westphalen. Profession: philosopher, economist, sociologist and journalist (esp. for new york. Context and focus of his writing: the collapse of feudalism and rise of capitalism. Marginalized for radical ideas, moved from germany to france back to germany and, finally england. Main collaborator, friend and benefactor friedrich engels. The main theorists of capitalism"s success were utilitarian thinkers such as j. s. They attributed this success largely to the dynamism of individuals. In contrast, for marx, the individual producer was a figment of the imagination of the utilitarians. Rather, he argues, productivity is fundamentally impossible without human beings entering into relationships with other human beings: materialism. The most fundamental aspect of human existence is the necessity to produce the means of subsistence: the hegelian inversion. Rather than human society being a product of ideas, ideas are a product of human society. The forces of production: the human knowledge, such as science and technology, employed in productive activity.
