FEUERBACH (1804-1872)
Ludwig Feuerbach is a German philosopher. He is known for his studies on the philosophy and anthropology of religion and is considered one of the pioneers of Marxist thought.
In his work The Essence of Christianity, he explains his thoughts on religion and human nature, and argues that Christianity is a reflection of the essence of man. In Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, he addresses a human-centered understanding.
Feuerbach adopts a materialist approach in his thoughts. Thoughts, emotions and existence are based on a material reality. He centers his philosophy on man. Religion is a way for man to glorify his own nature, religious beliefs are a reflection of the values in man's essence. He considers the concept of God as an expression of man's desires and emotions, with the idealization of his own characteristics. According to him, religion prevents people from understanding themselves, Christianity is an illusion that causes man to forget his essence.
ENGELS (1820-1895)
Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher. He played an important role in the development of the theory of socialism and criticism of capitalism. His well-known works are The Condition of the Working Class in England, Anti-Dühring, Dialectics of Nature, The Communist Manifesto, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Engels argues that social development is based on economic foundations. In his understanding of historical materialism, he says that history is shaped by class struggle and economic conditions. According to Engels, throughout history, societies have been in an ongoing struggle between those who own the means of production and those who do not. This class struggle is the engine of social change. Engels argues that socialism is an inevitable necessity. The working class must unite to realize social change. Engels reinterprets Hegel's dialectic from a materialist perspective. The processes of change and development in nature proceed through the unity and conflict of opposites. In his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels examined the social and economic conditions of women and emphasized the importance of fighting for women's freedom.
MARX(1818-1883)
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, and historian. According to him, it was necessary not only to understand the world, but to change it. He criticized Hegelian philosophy in his work The Holy Family, and in Capital he explained his thoughts on the capitalist mode of production, economic relations, and value theory. Since Marx had left life, the second and third volumes of Capital were published by Engels. He wrote the Communist Manifesto, in which he set forth the historical role of the proletariat and the basic principles of communism, together with Engels.
Marx applied Hegel's dialectical method on materialist foundations, turning it from its upside-down position onto its feet.
Dialectical Materialism
Matter is the only substance in the universe. Three factors are at work in the movement, change, and development of everything in nature; cells that ensure the development of living beings, the law of energy transformation, and thirdly, the process of evolution in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolution.
Matter, which has only physical and chemical processes in itself, suddenly gains a completely new quality when these processes reach a high level of complexity. Biochemical processes and the first living beings emerge in this way. When biochemical processes reach a sufficiently high level of evolution, a new quality that we call consciousness or spirituality emerges in the living being.
Engels says that there are three dialectical laws in nature;
1) Quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes.
2) The law of unity and struggle of opposites.
3) The law of negation of negation. When a seed germinates, its own negation occurs, when a plant produces seeds, the negation of negation occurs, and this time there are many seeds.
Historical materialism
According to Marx, a person who works to consciously transform natural objects in order to meet his needs is in productive activity. A person uses the means of production in his productive activity. The emergence of new needs leads to the further development of the means of production.
Marx defines the productive forces as both the people's own labor force and the means of production, tools and machines they own. In a society, who owns the means of production and how working life is organized, in other words, property relations and the form of division of labor, are called relations of production. Marx calls the material, economic and social relations in society the infrastructure. Political institutions, laws, religion, morality, art, philosophy and science constitute the superstructure. The economic infrastructure determines the cultural superstructure. This should not be taken in its absolute form, there is also a mutual interaction between the infrastructure and the superstructure.
At a certain stage of their development, when the relations of production, especially property relations, cannot keep up and even come to the point of becoming an obstacle, they come into conflict and contradiction with the existing relations of production. A qualitative transformation in the economic structure inevitably occurs. This transformation occurs through class struggles. Society passes through the stages of primitive communal society, slave society, feudal society and reaches the stage of capitalist society.
He analyzes the structure of capitalism in terms of the exploitation of the working class and how the increase in value is achieved. He examines the surplus value that emerges as a result of the sale of labor power by the employer at a higher value, and says that workers are exploited. Capitalism deepens economic inequalities and intensifies class conflict. In the capitalist social structure, the bourgeois class that holds the capital and the working class (proletariat) that markets its labor stand before them. The new stage that will occur due to the contradictions of capitalism is first socialism, in which the proletariat will be the dominant class, and finally communism, with the elimination of classes.
In the capitalist system, the worker, who is alienated from the product of his labor, is also alienated from the act of production due to the intense division of labor. According to Marx, alienation has four aspects; alienation from nature, alienation from themselves, alienation from their species existence, alienation from other people.
According to Marx, each historical period has its own ideas in the fields of religion, morality and law. Marx says that the ideas of each period emerge as a reflection of the material conditions of that period and that there are various ways to rationalize the existing order.