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Karl Marx
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What is Karl Marx?

Karl Marx is one of the most studied figures in the history of social, political, and economic thought. Students across disciplines including political science, sociology, economics, history, and philosophy regularly write about Marx because his ideas continue to shape debates about capitalism, labor, class, and social change. His major works, including Capital and the Communist Manifesto, co-authored with Engels, provide dense theoretical frameworks that reward close analysis. His concepts of the proletariat, historical materialism, and the dynamics of capitalist production give writers substantial intellectual material to engage with critically or comparatively.

The papers collected on this topic reflect a wide range of approaches. Some essays take a comparative angle, placing Marx in conversation with thinkers such as Rousseau, Rauschenbusch, Hirschman, and Putnam to examine how different theorists understand property, civic life, or social obligation. Others focus on specific texts like The Eighteenth Brumaire or Capital for close reading and analysis. Several papers address core Marxist concepts directly, including his theory of alienation, his critique of capitalism, his understanding of the working class, and his views on individualism. Historical and evaluative approaches also appear, with some essays asking students to assess whether Marx's class analysis remains convincing today.

A strong essay on Marx establishes a focused, arguable thesis rather than simply summarizing his biography or beliefs. Evidence drawn from Marx's own texts carries the most weight, so direct quotation and careful interpretation of primary sources are essential. A common pitfall is treating Marx's ideas as a monolithic system without acknowledging the tensions, evolutions, or ambiguities within his thinking across different works and periods.

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Paper Undergraduate

Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" and American poverty

Macroeconomic Theories and Nickel and Dimed

Kwame Anthony Appiah on class, gender, and race in colonialism

¶ … Inclusive Approach Reflecting a More Inclusive World

Paper Undergraduate

Nineteenth-century evolutionary theories of marriage, family, and religion

How do the methods of 19th Century Evolutionists explain the development of marriage, family, political organization, and religion?

Essay Doctorate

Anomie and alienation in classical sociology and Marx

Running through the literature of classical late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century sociology are themes of isolation, of the poverty of life lived in isolated cells, of the fragility of a life in which we can almost never make authentic connections with other people, in which we are lost even to ourselves. We have – and this "we" includes the entire population of the industrialized world, or at least most of it – have raised the act of rationalism to an art form, but along the way we have lost so much of our humanity that we can no longer form or maintain a community. Four of the major social critics of the twentieth century took up these themes for essentially the same reason: To argue that while ailing human society could be transformed in ways that would give it meaning once again. They differ significantly, however, in what the nature of that transformation should and what meaning humans should be intent on seeking.

Paper Undergraduate

Ethical frameworks in Western philosophy from ancient Greece to contemporary thought

Ethics is a philosophical concept that attempts to explain the moral organization within a given chronological time and cultural event. It is more concerned with understanding the way that ethnical ideas are presented,…

Freedom in Marx, Luther, Mozart, and Beethoven

Today, the concept of freedom is a very important one. On both a personal and collective level, freedom is considered one of the fundamental human rights. It is therefore useful to study how freedom manifested itself in…

Paper Undergraduate

Che Guevara's cultural influences and revolutionary ideals

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, more popularly known simply as Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. He is perhaps the most controversial Argentine Marxist Rebel and Revolutionary in the books of history.

Research Paper Undergraduate

George Orwell's Animal Farm as critique of Soviet communism

Animal Farm is one the most widely read books by George Orwell. Interestingly most people do understand the political significance of the book and know that it was written as an attack on totalitarianism.

Research Paper Undergraduate

Karl Marx's conflict theory and critique of capitalism

We are basically social beings in that most of our activities are interactions with other people (Jones 2003). What happens in those interactions is, therefore, of utmost importance to all who are interested in human…

Sociological analysis of conflict and institutions in Cool Hand Luke

The beauty of Sociology and perhaps the attribute that makes it so specific among human sciences is the fact that it helps one develop a sort of ability to view and analyze in an extremely profound manner, to discover…

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