"I'm just a normal person"

Hugh 2022-04-20 09:02:29

Due to the lack of corresponding knowledge reserves, I have to admit that I was full of doubts when watching this film. The three words "why" are always on my mind. Why would he do this? Why do you want to avoid the police? Why are the words so sarcastic? After reading it, by consulting the relevant historical background, the doubts in my heart gradually became clear, and I gained a new understanding of the basic principles of Marxism.

"Young Marx" is a film depicting the legendary encounter of 26-year-old Karl Marx and Engels in Paris, as well as their joint advancement of Marxist philosophy and social science theory. The film also restores the arduous process of the birth of The Communist Manifesto: it describes how Marx and Engels explored new philosophical and social science theories through what they saw and thought, how they searched for the truth under the prohibition of the authorities and the resistance of society, and how they were How to defy authority and reverse the wrong guidance of utopian socialism, finally united the representatives of the labor movement from all over the world and established the programmatic status of Marxism in the international labor movement. Since then, the international labor movement has been guided by correct theory, and the working class, as a progressive and conscious class, has changed the world history since then.

In addition, it is also mixed with the love stories of Marx and Jenny, Engels and Mary, and the trivia of the lives of great men. This part of the content band can make the viewer (at least myself) quickly close the distance with the great man. Before that, the image of Marx and Engels in my mind was a two-dimensional paper man, but through this film I felt a great leader with real flesh and blood. In the film, in order to support his family, Max will go to the post office to find a job, choose the cheapest cigars and bargain with small traders; he and his friend Engels play chess in a tavern and wait anxiously when his wife gives birth.

Fragments of many details present to the viewer, as Marx himself said, "just an ordinary man" Marx. But it was just knowing that he was so ordinary that made his great image more and more clear in my heart. He is not a saint, not a god, but an ordinary person like you and me, but in his ordinary life, he has made great contributions to the mankind of later generations.

"To get fresh wood, you have to break the branches off the tree. But it's not the case with dead branches, you don't have to steal anything from the property, it's already off the tree, it's out of the property. The two are fundamentally different, yet both are classified as acts of robbery and receive the same punishment."

This is the scene at the beginning of the film. It is a critical article written by Marx in the Rheinische Zeitung that exposes the face of capitalism. At the same time, it is also a dream that awakened Marx. It is not difficult to see that this is a scene that Marx personally experienced before, and this is the real appearance of that era. Although as the editor-in-chief of the "Rheinische Zeitung", he can use the government's "subsidy" (bribe) to say some ambiguous things and live a life without worry, but he does not. After listening to Proudhon's speech, he pointed out the shortcomings of Proudhon's thought, and bluntly proposed not to deny that Proudhon was a great man, but not a great economist. He saw the absence of Proudhon's ideas on the economy. Facing Weitling, who blindly promoted fraternity and was good at inciting the emotions of the masses, Marx made no secret of his contempt and denial of him. When Jenny and Mary took down the banner of "Everyone is a brother", it also symbolized that Marx's thought would smash utopian socialism.

"Heaven will assign great responsibilities to the people of this country, and they will surely suffer their will and toil their muscles and bones." I think this is the truest summary of the life of the "ordinary man" Marx.

First pass by Malaysia-Singapore Youth 2020.3.10

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The Young Karl Marx quotes

  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: [to Marx] Do not be like Luther who, after destroying Catholic dogma, founded an equally intolerant religion.