Karl Marx

History is the history of class struggle. All that is solid melts into air. Men's ideas change with changes in the conditions of their material existence.
Karl Marx was the founder of conflict theory, which argues that the competition of individuals and groups for wealth and power is the fundamental process shaping social structure. For conflict theories, basic questions about a social structure are "Who gets what and why?" Marx was born just after the monarchical restorations that concluded the Napoleonic wars. He studied philosophy at Berlin and then edited a radical newspaper, which…